


Transubstantiation

by Anonymous



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Ace author complicates your life unnecessarily, Altruism, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Aziraphale Takes Care of Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley Through The Ages (Good Omens), Chubby Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Submits to the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known (Good Omens), Crowley Whump (Good Omens), Everything Hurts, Food Issues, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Food as a metaphor for love in the same way that cocoa puffs are a metaphor for breakfast cereal, Gen, Internalized Fatphobia, It's Ineffable, Only Frances McDormand Can Judge Me, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Weight Gain, Weight Issues, because I am subtle like a brick to the face, but maybe not the way you thought, why am i the way that i am
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:33:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23380987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "And the LORD God said unto the serpent,Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle,and above every beast of the field;upon thy belly shalt thou go,and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life."The thing is, Crowley does eat when he dines with Aziraphale.It's just not the way you'd think.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 35
Kudos: 109
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> An idea struck me out of the blue: What if the reason Crowley never eats when he and Aziraphale go out is because he can't?
> 
> While Aziraphale is sustained by Grace and allowed to delight in God's creation (and eat whenever and whatever he wants), Crowley is damned eternally. He is forced to go hungry, and sustains his corporation like every other demon: On sin. What's an objectively not-terrible demon to do? 
> 
> Aziraphale finds out, and offers a solution.

_And the LORD God said unto the serpent,_

_Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle,_ _  
__and above every beast of the field;_ _  
__upon thy belly shalt thou go,_ _  
__and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life_

* * *

They mocked him for it, at first.

As though they themselves were somehow better, somehow one step above the absolute furthest Fallen, like Crawly was so much dirt beneath the Devil himself.

When he had first been cast out of heaven, like every other demon, he had been stripped of Grace and burned alive, and had felt the loving eye of the Almighty turn away from them all, leaving something impossibly _absent_ in its place.

Most demons, they curl around the edges of that glaring inner pit where love once was, and they relish the void they've created, nurturing it with hatred and vice and malice and violence.

Demons, fundamentally, _must_ feed on sin. Whatever Grace or Love that She had given them is gone, and the only way to continue existing is to take that away from some other creature and throw it into the furnace of their souls to burn for kindling.

Crawly knew this. Most of the Fallen spent their existence in Hell before Eden tearing away at each other, feeding on rage and horror until they're utterly glutted on it, insensate with pain and replete with despair. So, when the boss told him to _Go up there and make some Trouble_ , Crawly bit eagerly at the chance. He knew, on some level, that he was a flawed demon. Something of the celestial was left in him; some subconscious stain of Mercy or Compassion lingered, and where his brethren eagerly took out the worst of their frustrations on his hide, Crawly would wait until he was pushed to the furthest end of his tolerance before retaliating; even then he sometimes found it difficult to fight back. Not out of physical weakness, but out of some vestigial instinct that told him no, to stay his hand, that the spilling of blood was wrong.

But Crawly never doubted the inherent value of a curious mind. How could he? He was the original problem child where irritating questions were concerned.

And so, when he slithered up to flicker his forked tongue against the shell of Eve's ear, whispered to her about the beautiful flush skin of that perfectly ripe apple, heard that ever-so-satisfying _Tschk_ of teeth through fruit, it was with the moral reassurance that, although he'd surely be punished for tipping Her preciously constructed equilibrium into chaos, he certainly wasn't **hurting** anyone.

Was he?

*** 

Then, the fall of man. So unlike his own. It had a ring of eventual redemption to it; an unconditional love that made his own heart flare jealously. As they made their solitary way out of the Garden, Crawly heard Her voice, and the judgment in it felt like icy water over his skin: 

**_∭ẏ ₢∺⨢⦜⊅, ⩖ℍ⤧☩ ḫ⨹⧨ℇ ¥⟐⩐ 𝞉⦵₦ḝ ?_ **

_Why ask questions when You already know the answers?_

He felt, somehow, the sad and disappointed smile. Something of his own fangs gleamed in his mind's eye. He was afraid.

And then the curse was laid, _Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life._

***

Crawly learned, then, what it meant to be hungry. And he was never allowed, for even a moment, to forget.

That gnawing, eternal emptiness turned inward, deepened, began to eat away at him. His small temptations here and there were just barely enough to subsist on, never enough to satisfy. His own residual empathy (dare he call it humanity?) was turned against him. He wanted to rail at Her, scream, beg, _why? Isn't that what you wanted of me? To be kind? Was I not created by Your benevolent hand? Did my questioning blacken me to Your heart so much that I cannot even_ **_try_ ** _to redeem myself? Answer me! Mother!_

_Mother?_

_Please_

He got used to it, somehow. His corporations, unfortunately, always tended toward unhealthy thinness because of it. At least there was one silver lining to his 6,000 years of earthly service, though. Its name, as you know, was Aziraphale.

***

It wasn't intentional, the first time.

They were still just strangers at that point, really. Not for his lack of trying: Crowley felt, from first sight, that the angel was different. There had been a moment, on the wall, where he had asked about the flaming sword, sure as anything that it would be the weapon to strike him down just as soon as the Principality came to his senses and realized he was conversing with a _demon_ \--

And the angel _lied._

Just a white lie, granted, but still.

_Well, if you must know, I gave it away. I had to!_

He hadn't had to give them his sword, really. He'd chosen to, and Crowley felt an inexplicable lessening in the weight on his shoulders. Something about the exchange felt more reassuring, more amusing, more interesting than anything he'd known since his Fall.

And in that split second, without realizing it at all, he'd managed to fall all over again, in a very different way.

***

The second time, Crowley still hadn’t quite put his finger on what happened, but it had probably saved him from discorporation.

Thunder rumbled over the boiling waters, and the Serpent was trying hard to miracle away the seasickness in about twelve of the twenty or so children he had managed to hide in the lower levels of the Ark. He was running himself ragged. As the storm raged and the boat tossed on the waves, Crowley was cursing his own impulsivity. Saving children was the right thing to do, he reasoned, as it was a direct insult to Her plan and everything She had intended.  
  
The problem was, children don’t really sin as much as one would think, and particularly not when they’re frightened. Terrified, they have an irritating ability to do precisely as they’re told and stay very still, which is exactly what they were doing.

Crowley was shivering, curled against the wooden wall, one child asleep against him, and another crying in his lap, clinging to his robes as he tried to comfort it. He could relate; after all he was very scared himself, though for other reasons. He coughed, and trembled with chills from the fever that had taken hold of him since he’d stowed away two weeks ago. He should have tempted his way on board by bribing one of Noah’s sons. If he’d had any sense at all, he would have, but he couldn’t just leave kids to drown, not when that’s what She wanted. Noah and his family were far too strict to risk drowning themselves by flexing the rules. His stomach gave a biting growl and the child in his lap clutched herself closer; Crowley searched his recent memory and realized he couldn’t even recall when he had finished his last assignment. If he could just eat, maybe, then he could-- He shut that thought out, put it in a box, shoved it away.

_They’re children. Leave them alone. Don’t think about it._

But surely one could steal another’s toy? Their lives were in danger, couldn’t one take Her name in vain? Anything. _Anything_. He was so hungry his bones were aching.

_Not an option. They’re just kids, you’d be no better than She was. They’re children. Don’t think about it._

He couldn’t help the small sob in his breath as he shifted, eyes screwed shut in pain, trying to find a position that might alleviate some of the overwhelming _emptiness_ in his stomach. The little girl in his lap sniffed and held a lock of his long hair, and Crowley swallowed hard, and began idly counting the seconds between thunder and lightning to distract himself.

The child didn’t raise her head, but she heard his soft voice murmur in the dark.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Shhh,” he hushed, shifting again, feeling his whole body shudder as a wrenching cramp tore through his belly, “I’m counting.”

“Why?”

He huffed a desperate laugh, wondering if she had any idea who she sounded like with all these questions. Sweat beaded on his brow, but he felt so _cold._

“I… I’m counting the time between the thunder and the lightning.” He dug his nails into his palm, deliberately swallowed, and shifted again, keening in the back of his throat as the hunger licked its flames through his insides. “It…” Breathe. Hold. Exhale. “It tells me if the storm is getting closer or farther away.”

“Is it going away?” she asked.

Crowley went quiet a moment, listening to the chaos outside, feeling the frigid air and the damp timbers through his robes. There was a flash… He counted.

“Who’s there?” a voice called, somewhere near the entrance to the stall they were all huddled in. For one terrifying second, he’d thought it was Noah, but in the darkness there was a recognizable, dim heavenly glow around the figure. “What is this… Crawly? Er, Crowley? Is that you?”

As he stepped forward Aziraphale raised a torch, illuminating the children who looked up at him in fear and uncertainty. Thunder rolled in a rockslide of sound, rattling the boards as much as the howling wind outside.

_Please, not now. Not when I’m like this._

“My God,” Aziraphale murmured, realizing what the demon had done in direct defiance of his own heavenly orders. 

The timbers of the ship groaned and creaked.

“Angel,” Crowley sighed, setting the little girl aside and shakily getting to his feet. He had so little strength left, there was no way for him to put up a fight if it came to that, but so help him, he would discorporate trying. He steeled himself, and in a flash of lightning through the gaps around the window planks, shadowy wings rose protectively to stretch over the gathered children.

The Ark, at that very inopportune moment, lurched, and Crowley lost his footing as his legs gave way. He fell to his knees, coughing, wrapping his arms around his belly with a pained rasp in his breath. 

“You’re sick.” The angel’s eyes widened in concern.

_Relax, it’s nothing the kids will catch. Not unless they take a trip downstairs._

Aziraphale miracled the torch before he set it down, rendering it incapable of igniting anything else, _clever angel_ , and he stepped carefully around the small, gathered figures until he could kneel next to Crowley and ease him back to recline once more against the wall.

“You’re freezing! Haven’t you any blankets?”

“Didn’t exactly g-give this much f-forethought. I just… wanted to… I couldn’t let…”

“Shh, yes, okay, it’s alright. Blankets?”

“C-Cold blooded, Angel. Not much help.”

“Of course, I’m sorry, I should have guessed.”

“S’Okay,” he replied, another coughing fit stirring up another flare of hunger that made him groan and try to curl around his belly.

“Easy, then, easy, here. Against me,” he pulled the demon closer to him and Crowley hummed at the warmth, “That’s it.”

After a moment, Aziraphale frowned. “I thought demons couldn’t get sick?”

“S’my corporation, I think. Not much cut out for the damp and cold.”

There was a shuffling and a few distant voices, and Crowley struggled to sit up as Aziraphale shook his head and put a finger to his lips, peering intently toward the open stall door.

“I can’t stop them,” Crowley whispered, “Don’t have anything left in me. I… I failed.”

“Not yet, you haven’t.” It was strange, to hear the certainty in Aziraphale’s voice, so contrary to his usual nervously upbeat tones.

The voices drew closer, as did the faint glow of additional torches, and Aziraphale disentangled himself from the demon and stood, emanating a dim light of his own. Despite its softness, it still burned Crowley’s eyes, and he had to turn his face away.

“Whoever you are, come out!” A gruff voice called from the hall. Two dozen small murmurs went still as the children were scared silent.

A shuffle of many footsteps, so close they must be staring straight at them, and Crowley held his breath, rocking ever so slightly as the pain in his stomach throbbed.

And then, just like that, the angel’s voice in the gloom, “There’s no one here.”

Crowley inhaled sharply; the cramp had let up, finally.

“We heard something, I’m sure of it--”

“No,” the angel replied, and there it was again, the pain lessening by increments, and Crowley wanted to _sleep_ , he was so grateful for the reprieve, “You heard nothing. Go back upstairs. Tell your master.”

The men departed. Aziraphale sighed, waited until they were well out of earshot, and finally sat back down. “You’re still cold,” he said, “Here.”

He wrapped his own cloak, suffused with angelic body heat, around the demon’s shoulders. It was so imbued with celestial energy it burned, but Crowley was too tired to care.

“Sleep a while,” Aziraphale suggested. “I’ll keep watch.”

“Not too good for your image, angel, defying the Almighty. Manipulating humans on a demon’s behalf.”

Aziraphale huffed a sigh, and Crowley could have sworn he carded his fingers through the demon’s hair, but he was already floating in the strange numbness that had settled in his stomach, relief lulling him almost immediately to sleep.

When he finally woke, the skies had cleared and the residual chill let him know the angel was gone. The children were soundly sleeping, some even with contented smiles on their faces. Crowley looked down in confusion at the cloak still wrapped around his shoulders, and shook his head resignedly when his stomach growled, hunger already creeping back in like the tide.

***

They began seeing each other every once in a while, thwarting wiles and such, until a steadier friendship tentatively grew between them.

It was new yet, almost fragile. The demon needed to tread lightly, always, because Aziraphale was still wary of him, and Crowley could hardly blame him. 

As much as Crowley admitted to himself that he was beginning to appreciate the angel for his wit, his humor, and not least of all for his good heart, this was becoming problematic in a way he had not anticipated. Before, he’d had little concern with performing temptations here and there, quite minor, with the angel around.

But as the years passed, Crowley noticed the frown, the slight crease of disappointment or concern left in Aziraphale’s expression, as though he had expected something different, almost as though he’d forgotten what Crowley was, which was impossible, wasn’t it?

Except… why should he care? It was no mystery who they both worked for, and it wasn’t as though Crowley was badgering him about the acts of kindness or charity the angel doled out. Sure, he pretended to whine or complain, but they both knew he didn’t really mean it. But Aziraphale... He really did seem bothered. And that bothered Crowley.

Despite his best intentions, the demon was constantly on edge as a result of this tension, torn between happiness at seeing the one person he could call ‘friend,’ and irritation that it meant for however long they would spend together, _Crowley couldn't eat_. Not if he wanted to stay on the angel's good side, anyway.

He'd tried eating human food, after Eden. It had tasted like ash and burned on the way down. Burned worse when it came back up a few hours later. Out of frustration, he'd tried again here and there, hoping that he might hit on at least one blessed thing that would ease the chronic ache that gnawed in his belly. Nothing ever did, unless he performed a temptation or somehow convinced someone to sin.

As history progressed, he worked out different ways to manage. Humans, as it turned out, were remarkably adept at creating their own trouble, however, and this made his job twice as difficult when it was that much harder to lure them into trusting him.

The most surefire way was carnal sin, he'd quickly discovered; something physical, anatomical. Seducing a cheating spouse was easy, relatively painless, and in most cases, done without feeling or ties of any kind. He wasn't proud of it, he certainly didn't enjoy it, but it kept him alive.

He'd decided the Bacchanalias in Rome, then, were worth a shot. A few Incubi he'd met Downstairs swore they'd never struck better hunting grounds than in Caligula's reign of madness. Crowley had initially blanched at the idea of the gladiator arenas and senseless bloodshed, but an old-fashioned Bacchanalia sounded like a safe enough place to try his hand. Several months had passed since his last temptation, and Crowley was, in a word, absolutely starving.

Imagine his frustration, then, at seeing exactly the wrong angel in exactly the wrong time at exactly the _wrong blessed place_.

He hadn't even had a chance, yet, to tempt anyone into anything to take the edge off. He didn't mean to snap, _still a demon? What kind of dumb question is that? What else am I going to be? An aardvark?_ but the angel had caught him close to red-handed, when a moment ago he'd nearly convinced a patron to steal a tip left on a table, was so close to getting a girl to break up with her beau over an unnecessarily small dispute, for Someone's sake, _he'd settle for someone tripping one of the servers_ , he was so damn hungry. His stomach growled, and he put his palm over it with an exasperated, if silent, sigh. He could put it off, couldn’t he? For an afternoon, that was all. He could do this.

“Oh! Let me tempt you--” The angel caught himself and grinned self-deprecatingly, “No, that’s… that’s your job, isn’t it?”

_You have no idea how much I wish it were._ It didn’t work if he were the one doing the sinning, was the thing, but couldn’t he elbow a drink off the bar ‘by accident?’ Even a good old fashioned bar brawl might provide enough wrath to take the edge off, wouldn’t it?

But Aziraphale’s eyes were alight with the promise of conversation, connection, a single shared knowledge of their uniqueness among mankind, and Crowley was so frustrated with pretending, he could hardly deny the angel anything. He remembered the cloak around his shoulders, so long ago, the mercy and kindness showed to him despite how he had done his utmost to thumb his nose at the Great Ineffable Bloody Plan.

It was settled, then. They departed for oysters, chatting easily as they passed through the crowds. 

“It’s, ah, very nice, actually, to see you about. Gets lonely here, sometimes, doesn’t it? Can’t expect the home offices to understand.” As he strolled along, Aziraphale brushed a bit of street dust off his toga with a fussy click of his tongue, and the demon tried hard not to chuckle at one of the angel’s quirks; one he was starting to appreciate despite himself.

“It is easier, when there’s someone to talk to about it. Humans are right out.” Crowley shrugged, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m fond of the nasty little buggers, but I have houseplants with better self-awareness than this lot. Must be bliss,” he added quietly, looking at the throngs of people on the street around them, “to find so much joy in such simple things.”

“Oh, but it is! And why not for ourselves, too? Her works are full of so many beautiful things, so many gifts, and it seems as though they always--”

The angel continued as Crowley rolled his eyes fondly at the excessive sentiment and, stepping aside, proceeded to clean the lenses of his glasses. They’d gotten a bit scratched, with the sand blowing so often, and the dirt. If he was quick about it, nobody should--

“ _ Oh.” _

Crowley froze for a moment, then scrambled to finish wiping the lenses and put them back. 

_ Stupid, stupid, stupid, of course he’s startled, hereditary enemies, and you just had to go and-- _

A gentle hand staid his wrist. “Please don’t,” Aziraphale smiled hesitantly. “Please. I don’t mind. Really.”

“It’s okay, Angel, you don’t have to pretend to spare my feelings. I know what they look like.”

“I’m not pretending.” The words were matter of fact.

Crowley bit his lip, still not looking at the angel, but he finally nodded. “Okay.”

Before he could pocket them, the angel gave a beatific grin and snapped them away with a small miracle.

“Hey!”

“As I was saying,” Aziraphale hooked his arm around Crowley’s elbow, and continued along, “those simple pleasures… Well, really, these oysters are going to be one of the best you’ve had, small things, but such  _ flavor _ , you really must…”

It was like nothing he had ever felt before, listening to him, walking beside Aziraphale with their arms linked. He could feel the slight sting of divinity through their clothes, like the heat off a hearth when one sat too close. He wanted to cry, stupidly, absurdly, from the simple act of touch. He could not remember the last time someone had touched him, someone he actually _wanted_ to touch him, and it was a revelation, the difference that made. This wasn’t a quick tumble somewhere, there were no ulterior motives, nothing but the enjoyment of someone’s companionship. The reminder of his last temptation left a sour taste in his mouth by contrast, and his stomach tightened painfully in response.

Crowley had resolved himself to getting drunk this evening, if only to mask the sharp throbbing of hunger in his belly until he either slept or performed a temptation, when there was a sudden cry of alarm behind them. The pedestrian he’d passed spun quickly with a shout:

_"Monster!"_

_Fuck._

His eyes. It was always his eyes... He hadn’t done anything wrong, was the thing. Hadn’t even had a chance, even though he’d _wanted to._ (And oh, just then, he wanted to, if it meant finally spending time around Aziraphale without being so hungry he was trembling with the effort of self-control.) 

“I beg your pardon?!” Aziraphale whirled around with an indignant ruffle of pan-dimensional feathers.

“Not you! _Him!”_

“Angel, my glasses, please.”

“How dare you!”

“Aziraphale.” 

Without losing a beat, Aziraphale whisked the glasses out of the ether and held them out for Crowley to take as he stepped protectively in front of the demon. The woman wasn’t backing down.

“I know what I saw! Show me! Show me your eyes, fiend!”

_Remember what you are. You can’t forget for a second._

He considered it. He could flash his reptilian stare, let her come at him, finally ease his long starvation with unprovoked violence. 

_Do it. Taunt her._

Crowley would have laughed at his own misery had he not stumbled against the wall as searing pain tore through his gut. 

_Monster, am I? Come on. Give me a reason. Give me one reason, I’m begging you,_ **_Do it_ ** _, I swear to--_

He tried to shake it off, come back to his senses---

 **_No._ ** _No. No, I can stop. I don’t need to eat._ **_Stop_ ** _._

\--but his stomach growled pleadingly, and he almost broke.

 _I’m hungry. Please._ **_Please_ ** _, just a taste, please..._

Aziraphale was saying something, telling her she'd got the wrong idea, and the twinge of a headache at the demon's temples told him that there was a bit of divine intervention involved with selling that particular concept to such an adamant soul. 

_No,_ he shuddered, _The angel, not with Aziraphale here, I can’t. I won’t. Be better. Be better than what you are._

The angelic grace permeating the air was too much, reminding him of innocence and purity and righteousness and the wounds that can’t heal when it’s torn away. Crowley doubled over, trying not to retch, suddenly dizzy.

If he didn't know better, if he hadn't spent so many centuries with a similar cramp in his stomach, he'd have thought for certain he'd been stabbed. The woman was storming off, Aziraphale _hmph_ 'ed as if to say _the nerve!_ , but all Crowley could do was turn away and grit his teeth and count his breath slowly, hoping that the hunger pang would ease off before the angel could notice.

"My dear boy, are you alright? Did she hurt you?"

"'M fine."

"You look ill! Crowley, please tell me--"

"Not ill, Angel--"

"What then? Are you injured?"

"No, no, none of that," he wearily pushed himself back, drawing in a shaky breath, still holding himself in a vain attempt to soothe it, "Just... leave it alone. I'm fine, really, just a little sensitive to divine influence is all. Let's go get those oysters you promised, alright?"

The hunger didn't seem as important anymore, even if it was all the more insistent for having so nearly been assuaged. Aziraphale's little display of bravery had surprised him, to be honest. Crowley would never have guessed the angel would defend him like that. He was kind to everyone, true, but Crowley had assumed that was just part of his nature, being kind and merciful to humans. That his kindness should extend to a demon still took getting used to, even after the Ark.

At the restaurant, finally, Crowley sipped his wine, trying not to drink too quickly, just enjoying the conversation. Aziraphale, for his part, finished two plates of oysters before ordering a third, cocking his head at Crowley as if to puzzle him out.

"Are you certain? You don't even wish to try one?"

"Nah, Angel, they're all yours. Never developed a taste for human food, I suppose."

"Well, it is true that celestial corporations don't _need_ to eat, per se, but... Crowley, is that true of demons as well?"

His question was, thankfully, cut short by the arrival of said third plate. Aziraphale blushed. "Had I known you weren't going to... well, that is... I ought to cut myself off I suppose, perhaps send these back? I shouldn't accept them, not if..."

The angel's words faded out of focus as Crowley's senses honed to razor sharpness, the hunger returning like hot coals in his belly, and Crowley found himself interrupting, "Eat."

Aziraphale stuttered to a halt.

"I'm sorry?"

"Eat them," the demon repeated, trying not to sound as desperate as he felt.

The blonde blinked, clearly not expecting such insistence, before Crowley added, "Please."

"No sense allowing them to go to waste," the angel said hesitantly.

"It'd be a pity, really. Just once. Live a little."

"Are you... tempting me, Crowley?"

He tried not to let his breath hitch when his stomach growled warningly. "Is it working?"

_Would it even work on an angel? What am I doing? I should leave. I should go and find someone else to--_

Aziraphale tilted his head a bit with narrowed eyes, trying to put his finger on whatever it was that Crowley was so invested in, and reached an unsure hand toward the oysters, as if asking for permission. 

_Someone help me, am I really going to do this?_

The demon slid the plate closer to his friend with a tightness in his throat that he was praying wouldn’t show on his face. The rich contents of the first three shells on the plate slid down the angel's throat in quick succession.

He hiccuped, blushing again, shaking his head, "I really oughtn't, Crowley. There's too many, and I'm so full."

The plaintive note in his voice broke Crowley's resolve. He didn't want his angel to be uncomfortable just because he couldn't--

"Ah, well. When in Rome, hmm? What could it hurt?" Three more down. Crowley hadn't even had to say a word. Wide-eyed, he watched as Aziraphale finished every. last. one. And the bread, besides.

"Oof," he fidgeted with his robes, "Awful tight, these. Should have had the tailor see to them before this evening, I shall have to make an appointment tomorrow. Crowley? Crowley, are you alright? You must tell me what this is about, please, I'm worried about you. Are you... are you crying?"

He was.

Crowley was crying.

The pain, that infernal fucking knife in his gut was _gone_ . Gone. Like it had never been. He was dazed, almost thought he'd had enough wine to really do the trick, before he understood... it was the angel, that had done it. Sin. The Garden, when he’d lied… The Ark, when he’d helped Crowley thwart the Divine Plan… This… This was not good. At all. Aziraphale was pushing himself into dangerous territory. Gluttony was a sin, albeit a very mild one, but a sin nonetheless, and that endless well of grace within him was spilling into Crowley, overflowing, finally _finally_ easing the stranglehold of hunger that had been his every waking moment since time literally began.

"I'm alright, Angel," he murmured. The angel shifted, clearly overfull and terribly uncomfortable, but still worried about his friend's wellbeing more than his own.

Crowley realized, then, that he was in very deep trouble indeed.

***

Dining out became a regular occurrence over the centuries. And every time, Crowley begged himself not to encourage Aziraphale. As sharp as the void of Damnation was, it also served as a painful reminder of exactly what could happen to his angel if Crowley ever tempted him again. The problem was, Aziraphale was beginning to do it all on his own. It was too easy.

He _loved_ the bounty of God’s creation, loved every sensation, and especially loved the human’s fondness for extravagant cuisine. Their culinary imagination seemed to know no bounds, and Aziraphale seemed eager to try as much of it as he could.

This left Crowley in the difficult position of desperately wanting the hunger to stop, wishing for his angel to be happy, and yet not wanting to aid in any way with something that could ever cause Aziraphale to Fall. It was a torment to him.

He fretted, and hated himself, and sipped coffee as he watched his angel hum contentedly around a forkful of Pasta Negra in Ravenna, followed him in a starved haze into Sravasti where he drank chai while Aziraphale discovered new and rapturous spices in Vedic Pallao, tried and failed in resisting the invitation to join him for Choujiu and Bird’s Nest Soup in Yanjing, (which the angel followed up with a great number of dumplings and Nian Gao), an evening he remembered only because he had sobered up at the last minute, watching Aziraphale from the corner of his eye while they mapped out the stars and Crowley told him what he had never told anyone since his Fall: the original names of his creations, the star systems and nebulae, though the Enochian burned his tongue and throat. 

Dew was beginning to collect on the grass around them and the night was cooling off, with crickets calling from the trees around them. It was peaceful. Or it was, until Crowley’s stomach growled.

“I thought you looked a bit peaky. Why didn’t you have any of the dumplings I offered you? They were excellent.”

Crowley shrugged and looked away. “Not hungry, Angel.”

The angel studied him a moment, nearly said something, he was sure of it, but instead took the bottle they’d just opened between them and took a healthy swig.

He wasn’t clear what possessed him to say it. He hadn’t meant to, but:

“Bet you can’t finish it.”

“Oh really?” A mischievous glint appeared in his eyes.

“Go on, angel. Prove me wrong.”

And Aziraphale did.

He drained it in one go, hiccupping with a laugh afterward when Crowley sputtered in shock. 

“Oi! Leave some for the rest of us!”

“There’s a drop or so,” he laughed, offering it back before his smile turned calmer, “But you don’t mind, do you? Forgive me, I’ll get another--”

Before he could snap his fingers, Crowley grinned and stilled his hand, “Nah, don’t. We’re alright. Look, that one there? Alpha Centauri.”

“Oh! Tell me.”

Aziraphale had peered upward in awe as Crowley explained, trembling with an unnameable joy that carried an unbearable dread. Running a hand absently over his stomach, he realized the hunger had receded significantly, enough to give him pause.

“Crowley?”

“Sorry, Angel. I forgot what I was saying.”

_Does he know? Was that my fault, or did he do it of his own accord? If this keeps happening, I’m going to lose him_.

The thought burned him as horribly as his relentless appetite. He started to avoid their meetings, dodge invitations. He couldn’t bring himself to stop spending time with him entirely, almost giving in so many times at Aziraphale’s confusion.

“Did I say something wrong?” “Surely one afternoon…?” “Of course, my dear boy, I’m sorry. I’ll go. I didn’t mean to be a bother.”

His heart was breaking.

The 1450s came, and Crowley accepted the truth: He could no more leave Aziraphale alone than he could subject either of them to the disgust and disappointment his angel would surely feel if Crowley led a human to their damnation.

He started to go mad with it. Even when he wasn’t with Aziraphale, the angel came to mind when he tried to tempt, and sometimes he stopped himself, and sometimes he went through with it anyway, to shut it up, except no matter how minor the sin, he always hid afterward, sometimes for years at a time before he could face Aziraphale again. The hunger sank into every corner and crevice of him, inexorable, as repulsive as his eyes or his scales or his hiss. There was no way to silence it, no escape from it, not without a price. And that would not be Aziraphale. Never him.

Crowley wept, and tore his clothes, tugged at his hair with blackened nails and screamed at God with sharp teeth and a tongue envenomed by his own twisted soul; and it was no more than he deserved, but it was more than he could bear anymore.

Starving, cold, feverish, Crowley let go of the world and turned his back on his nature, and for a hundred years he slept.

***

  
  


The Blitz.

A minor miracle. Books saved, and maybe a friendship as well.

It wasn’t two hours later… The careful and tender washing of his feet, bandaging the burned soles that hurt so much less than his sore stomach, that hurt so much less than his bruised heart.

It was selfish of him. He hated himself for it.

“Please.” He put his hand on the angel’s wrist and let the nerves rear back in alarm at the profanity of his body touching what was holy. “Please stay.”

Aziraphale rocked back on his heels where he knelt, the bowl of linen bandages and bloodied water between his knees, and he lifted off Crowley’s glasses in a slow move that gave him a chance to stop him if he wished.

God knows he should have.

But Crowley was well versed in so many vices, it was no surprise that gluttony was one of them they apparently both shared; but Crowley alone was the glutton for punishment.

“Crowley,” the angel hesitated, “We’ve known each other a while now, and… I wanted to ask you something.”

“Anything,” he replied, hardly daring to breathe.

“Look, I’ll give you the holy water if you want it.” Aziraphale’s blue eyes flicked up to meet him, and suddenly he felt very, very naked, unable to hide or obscure the yellowgold irises or the thin slits of his pupils. “But I want something from you in return. You won’t like it.”

What could he possibly ask that Crowley wouldn’t give willingly?

“Name it.”

The bowl was slid aside, and the angel sat cross-legged, still gazing at him, a slight frown of concentration indenting his brow in that way it did, the way Crowley had mapped out every feature, every detail, every--

“I want the truth. Why won’t you dine with me?”

_What?_

“I… I do. All the time. What kind of a question is that?”

“No… No, Crowley. You sit with me. You drink with me. But you don’t eat with me.”

Something cold crept across the demon’s skin. _No. We aren’t going there._

“Look, you were right about the holy water, I’m sorry, I’ll figure something else--”

“I have been meaning to ask for centuries,” Aziraphale interrupted, “I’ve never understood it.”

_Bollocks._

“Angel…” the demon grasped helplessly, “I don’t know what to tell you. We don’t need to eat.”

“No, Crowley. I don’t need to eat. But I don’t get hungry, either. Or, at least, not unless I’m around you.”

_Fuck._

“What do you mean?”

“Angels don’t need to eat, maybe. But… Crowley, I don’t know how much you remember from… Before.... But angels can sense things.”

“Love…” he croaked, hardly daring to breathe _._

“And pain.”

It was whiplash: Thank Someone, it didn’t seem as though they were having the conversation he’d been dreading for a millenia at least, his heart wasn’t dissected on the table, but then what was his angel talking about? Pain?

“Crowley,” Aziraphale touched his shin, gently, still looking up at him in concern, “I have never seen you eat. But,” he hesitated, “you’re always hungry.”

He felt the blood drain from his face. If he hadn’t already been sitting, his knees might have buckled. As it was, his stomach dropped like a stone.

“Really hungry, even, like… like a human that hasn’t eaten in, in days? Weeks? I can’t understand it. I’ve met other demons, Crowley, but… the only time, ever, that I felt something like this was… well, it’s only you.”

_I’ve been careful. I’ve been so careful. God,_ the name rang in his mind like a migraine but he couldn’t help the blasphemous prayer, _where did I let it slip? Did I tempt in front of him? No, no, that can’t be it, but he says he_ **_felt it_ ** _._

Panic seeped bitter in the back of his mouth, _Unfair- This- This isn’t fair, I have tried, I have tried so hard, how could he know? Does he know that I… When he… Oh fuck…_

“Now, even. Crowley, it’s like a… like a fog around you, I can sense it. Always. And I can’t imagine what it must be like, but I know…" The Angel hesitantly touched his ankle, pity and muted concern tenderly echoing back from the contact, "I know it must hurt.”

_He said he felt it. Did he know when he stopped it? Wait... is he actually_ **_feeling_ ** _it? Not just aware of it-- is it_ **_hurting him?_ **

Scrambling to his feet, Crowley backed away, accidentally upsetting the water bowl, panting shallowly, “I’m s-sorry. Fuck, Aziraphale, I’m _so sorry_ . I didn’t--I-- _Please,_ I’ve tried not to, I haven’t eaten at all, I swear, not s-since--”

“No! No, I’m not _blaming_ you, Crowley, I’m worried!” Aziraphale got up slowly, approaching Crowley as though he were scared he might bolt, hands splayed, eyes brimming with a love that made him feel sick to his stomach, _even now, he’s worried about me? Angel, I’m_ **_evil._ ** _I’m damned, and twisted, and wrong, and I--_

“Crowley,” the voice snapped him from his spiraling thoughts, and Aziraphale edged closer. “I’m trying to understand. Help me understand. Why won’t you eat? If you’re hungry, you must need to. Why torment yourself?”

“Please. Aziraphale, look, if you care for me at all, you’ll drop this. Right now.”

“If you want the holy water, you’ll answer my questions.”

“Aziraphale, _please._ ”

“Is… is it a punishment?”

He let out a frantic laugh and shook his head, “She always had a sick sense of humor. You know that.”

“Crowley…”

“I…” _Where do I even begin?_ “I can’t…”

“Please,” Aziraphale tentatively touched his arm, slid his hand down to interlace their fingers, and led him back to sit beside him on the sofa, “Just tell me. Crowley, maybe I can help. Maybe I can stop it somehow?”

“No!” he snatched his hand away, reared back, “No, Angel, you can’t. That’s not… It isn’t like that.”

The blonde just waited, patient, still gazing at Crowley with those raw blue eyes.

The demon swallowed hard. He collected himself and took a steadying breath and let it out slowly.

“Demons feed on sin, Angel. The temptations, the discord, the violence. When we lead a human away from Her will, that’s what sustains us. We… Well, we both know I’ve never been a very good demon. So yes, in a way, you could say it is a punishment. Or maybe more of a natural consequence.”

Aziraphale finally looked away, intensely studying some liminal space, as though searching for something in what Crowley had said. But then his expression changed to one of surprise, and then startled horror as he turned back to his friend.

“All these years, these centuries…I can’t believe that I... You must believe me, Crowley, I didn’t know. I didn’t realize. I’ve… God, I have been asking you to  _ starve yourself. _ ” He got up and started to pace, and Crowley shook his head trying to allay his guilt somehow.

“Angel, no. No. You never forced me to do anything, I chose--”

“But I asked you to. Crowley, I am so sorry, I had no idea. I wouldn’t have…” but he couldn’t finish, suddenly unsure of himself.

“You wouldn’t have? It won’t kill me, Aziraphale.” He smiled humorlessly. “A human’s eternal soul possibly damned for my comfort? Hardly seems a fair exchange.”

“A human soul?” The angel suddenly pinned him with a calculating stare. “Does it need to be human?”

**_Fuck._ **

_Abort mission NOW._

“Right, no, we are not discussing this.”

“But if I--”

“NO. N. O. No, Aziraphale. Absolutely fucking not.”

“It worked before!”

“Do you really need reminding what happens to an Angel who disobeys? I’m _standing right here._ Don’t even think it. It’s not an option. End of discussion.”

“I made it stop, that time in Rome, _I know I did_. I felt it. It doesn’t have to hurt anybody, Crowley. What if I just--”

Crowley startled them both by shattering every glass in the cabinet behind him, including the panes in the doors, as he spun to hiss, “ **NO** ”, fangs extended, eyes flashing a poisonous yellow.

He panted, clearly struggling to get himself back under control, but the angel stepped forward, and the demon’s instincts smelled a fight. His stomach roared emptily and Crowley backed away shaking his head, “Stop…”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale took another step, beseeching, and Crowley’s insides _twisted._

The pain knocked the breath out of him and he gasped out, “ _Stop! Stop, Angel, please stop, please--”_

It felt like he was breaking, like something inside him was cracking into razor-edged pieces as he weakly dropped back to the couch with a frustrated desperate laughing sob. His stomach growled painfully, loudly, and he folded around it, suddenly so, so tired, breathless, aching.

“God, Crowley--” and then the angel was next to him. He pressed the heel of his palm against the seized muscles in his abdomen, shaking, choking, it hurt, _it hurt, it hurt, it_ ** _hurt_** _\--_

“Shhh.” A warm hand was rubbing soothing circles into his back. His stomach cramped again, and Crowley groaned, leaning to bury his face in the angel’s shoulder. “Easy, my dear, easy. I know it hurts. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I pushed you.”

He panted, eventually able to steady his breathing again, Aziraphale’s fingers carding through his hair, head tucked beneath the angel’s chin. 

“Let… let me sleep…” he gasped out, “Need to sleep, angel… Aziraphale, please…’M so tired…”

“Of course, Crowley, shhhh…”

“You'll stay?”

“Whatever you need.”

The pain took a while to fend back to a level where the demon could sleep. Even then, Aziraphale waited a couple hours before gently settling him down and getting up to find Crowley’s keys on the counter. He slipped out of the apartment unnoticed.

It was only about fifteen minutes or so later that the angel entered again, trying as discreetly as possible to balance several bags while nudging the door shut with his foot. With the rationing, he'd needed to get a bit creative with his shopping, but there were still a few miracles left in him that night, or so he hoped. He had never tried to do something like this before. Five loaves and fishes seemed rather more the Nazarene's purview than his own. 

The bombs carried on outside, brilliant flashes like lightning in the dark, carrying Aziraphale back to a night centuries ago, when he saw the figure standing with wings outspread over helpless souls, raring for a fight he knew he'd never win. 

It was with this mental image in mind, his brave and noble and _stupid_ demon, that he resolved himself to his task. He cautiously returned to the sofa where Crowley was still curled up asleep, a faint wince of pain ghosting over his features.

The angel spread out the groceries on the table, unsure where to start. He’d gotten rather a lot, even for him. But he could see the pattern now, as he rifled through his memories. Crowley could only get relief from someone sinning because of his direct intercession. He hoped to Heaven this would count.

“Crowley, dear,” he murmured.

The demon shivered, curled tighter around his midsection with a sleepy ‘mmm’ of acknowledgement.

“Are you hungry?” It wasn’t playing fair, he knew, asking him while he was asleep. Crowley wasn’t conscious to lie or defend himself, but that was the only way Aziraphale could ensure he could, well, tempt the demon into tempting _him._

Crowley flinched in pain, turned his face away.

“Crowley, are you hungry?” he asked again.

The demon whined in the back of his throat. His stomach growled audibly and he nodded.

“Should I make it stop?”

Nod.

Aziraphale felt it then, the sort of tugging emptiness he’d felt once in Rome, when Crowley had looked at him with that desperate yet strangely predatory gleam in his eye and ordered him to ‘Eat.’

Aziraphale ate.

***

_What did I do?_

Crowley opened his eyes. He was on his couch. Centuries ago, there had been a handful of times he woke feeling like this. But this wasn’t a brothel or an unknown bedroom, it was his flat, and he had one rule: Never his place. Not sex, then.

Had he… had he hurt someone?

Had he made someone hurt somebody else?

_What did I do?_

His body felt… solid. At ease. Shivery, but warm. Safe.

_Oh fuck._ He wasn’t hungry. At all. _Don’t panic, stay calm, stay calm. Who did I hurt?_

He sat up, quickly enough to make his head spin, before he began to try to groggily make sense of what he was looking at.

Wrappers. Takeout tins, a few plastic forks, tinfoil, four paper bags, and several containers scraped nearly clean. Curry, by the smell of it.

_But I don’t eat…?_

_So how…?_

And then it came back to him. The conversation last night. And how he had begged his Angel not to do something _exactly like this._

“Aziraphale...” He swallowed hard and looked around for his friend. Was he still here? 

_What if he’s Fallen? Overeating, sure, not topping anyone’s list of deadly sins nowadays but Gluttony was one of the Big Seven, and he was not fucking gambling with Aziraphale’s wings on the line, not when he knew damn well just how little it took for his own “vague saunter” downward…_

“Aziraphale?”

He padded to his bedroom, about to change, ready himself to tear up London in pursuit, but he stopped in the doorway.

It was odd.

He’d never seen Aziraphale sleep before. Presumably, he’d never needed to. But eating about ten pounds of takeaway would make anyone sluggish, from what he could tell of human behavior. Maybe that’s just what it took to push his angel over the edge.

He grimaced, immediately regretting that mental phrasing.

He also knew from observation that Aziraphale would have a hell of a stomach ache from eating so much so quickly. Crowley miracled a glass of cold water and set it on the nightstand before settling on the edge of the mattress and gently shaking his friend.

“Aziraphale.”

The angel startled, then smiled when he saw who was rousing him as he stretched with a wide yawn. Carefully, he pushed himself up to recline against the headboard, frowning as he rubbed at a stitch in his side.

“Drink. Slowly.” Crowley passed him the glass of water without meeting his eyes, but Aziraphale saw the sadness and self-recrimination all over his face and it troubled him.

“How are you feeling, my dear?”

“Better than you, I expect.”

“I should hope so.”

“Aziraphale, I asked… I _begged_ for you not to do this.”

“Look at me.”

Silence.

Sighing, the angel took another sip and then set the water aside and took Crowley’s face in his hands, turning him to meet eye-to-eye, a little worried to see that he was actually crying.

“If you Fall,” the demon whispered, “it will be because of me. I can’t live with that. I won’t.”

“Crowley,”

“No,” he tugged free from Aziraphale and stood, arms folded defensively, pacing the room. “You don’t understand how little it takes. Barely a nudge. Damnation is nothing to scoff at, Angel, I’m living proof of that. Do you want us to be a matched set? Because I can tell you now I’m not worth it, not by a long shot.”

A moment passed before Aziraphale collected his thoughts enough to speak. He patted the bed beside him. Reluctantly, Crowley took the spot.

“I know that you are worried, Crowley. And I know why.”

He took his hands between his own, felt how cold they were, wished he could somehow take the chill from them the way he’d taken away the hunger.

“I won’t tell you not to be concerned, but for my part, this is my choice. I am _choosing_ to do this. Which do you suppose is more wicked? Helping a friend, or ignoring their pain when you could do something so simple to alleviate it?”

“Second-guessing God’s judgement or preserving the sanctity of Her creations?” he shot back.

“Crowley _you_ are as much Her creation as I am!”

“And so was Lucifer, are you looking to serve him next? Where does it end? Aziraphale, _I was damned for a reason._ This… this hunger, I deserve it.”

“No, you don’t. Crowley, the very reason that you’re starving is exactly why you _shouldn’t_. You would rather go hungry than allow anyone else to suffer. Why can’t you accept that this is the same reason I want to help you?”

But the demon just shook his head, stood up, and turned away.

“Don’t do that again,” he said quietly. “Please.”

“I’m afraid I can’t promise that… But, what if we compromise? I can sense it. What if I wait? You’ll still feel it, but when it gets to be too much, that’s when I step in?”

“Only if I get to decide--”

“No deal.”

Crowley turned to scowl, but Aziraphale shrugged and took another sip of water.

“You and I both know you’d never let me intervene if it were up to you.”

“Because you shouldn’t!”

“Well how about _this_ , then?” Aziraphale got out of bed and snapped his fingers, tartan pajamas replaced with clothes miracled on in impeccable tidiness. Somehow the crisp lines served only to underscore the severity in his eyes. “You don’t actually get a say, Crowley, when it comes down to it. What I do to my corporation is my own business. Besides, I know, now. If the temptation must be caused directly by you, then just the knowledge of what you’re feeling may sufficiently _tempt_ me to fix it whenever I see fit.”

Crowley went utterly still, “You wouldn’t.”

“And why not?”

“Think of what this could do to you! To your reputation in heaven! They already think you’ve gone native, Aziraphale, you want them thinking you’ve gone soft and you’re consorting with a demon, too? Please,” he begged, “Be rational. _Think about what you’re saying._ ”

Another snap of his fingers, and Aziraphale erased the evidence of his binge from the other room. He was cursing himself for not having done it the night prior, but he’d nearly eaten himself sick. When he’d finished, after finally seeing the creases of pain at the corner of Crowley’s eyes smoothe out as he drifted into an easier sleep, it was all the angel could do to drag himself to bed as well. Even now, he felt several pounds heavier for what he’d done, but he regretted nothing; would do it again in a heartbeat. Planned to, in fact. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where the hell am I going with this...?
> 
> Or did I just answer my own question?

It’s an unsettling thing, to learn that everything you’ve come to know, to love, to depend on, will likely end in a matter of years. The Dowling Estate is hardly where any Ethereal or Occult being would picture themselves spending the days leading up to the Apocalypse, and yet… Well, Crowley and Aziraphale were never exactly exemplars of their kind, were they? If they had been, they certainly would not have agreed to their current Arrangement, nor their respective human careers undercover.

The thing is, though, that the End of All Things is a rather heavy subject matter to have hanging over one’s head every moment of the day, entirely dependent on their personal success or failure.

It tends to carry a certain ominous weight. And no matter how cavalier one might seem in shouldering such a responsibility, there’s cracks in any foundation, and it only takes letting one’s guard down once to give that anxiety a place to creep in.

For example, Crowley barely remembers his Fall. Most of the time, he actively pushes it out of his memory.

He never used to dream about it, either. In fact, sleep was his favorite maladaptive coping method, ask anyone who knew him.

He tries not to sleep, lately.

His corporation was used to it though; so used to it that it was as much a compulsion for him as it would be for any human being. He was beginning to dread it.

* * *

You have to understand, celestial beings had no concept of gravity, because it did not exist until they started constructing the cosmos, and even then, it never applied to them: It was the physics that webbed the matter of universes together, bound some things to each other and separated others; it was a force that acted on their creations, but not on angels themselves. There was no actual act of “falling” at all, not until it happened for the first time. Not until it happened to him.

_The battle is a metaphysical cacophony that human minds cannot conceive of, something that still presently exists on several other planes of reality as we know it, skirting the edges, time and space warped beyond recognition by the death throes and panicked last resorts of thousands of celestial beings; a slow-motion tableau of subliminal entropy, tumbling apart forever in the space of an instant… but the utmost shall be done to put things into images that might make sense to us._

_He is scared._

_There is a long, sticky wound that runs from sternum to hip, painting his hands with golden ichor. He is alive. He is not grateful for it._

_When he turns his face where he lies, he is mere inches away from the slain corpse of Gabriel’s second in command, his own head resting on the outstretched dislocated wing. He is imperfectly still, motionless. Exiled, Her breath has left a shell behind._

_He puts his fingers to Ramiel’s parted lips, traces them, shuts the sightless eyes._

_There are gold-smeared feathers cascading from different realms above them where the battle rages on, and down as fine and weightless as a snowfall is leaving drifts between the dead._

_Heaven has become an abattoir._

_He, Israfel, Ariel, and several others had tried to defend what was left of his Choral garrison. The injured were too numerous, but still they attempted to heal whomever was brought to their outpost, regardless of their allegiance to either faction. He was acting against his orders to leave the reserves and take arms, but as an unwilling conscript, that was nothing new._

_The siege on their makeshift field hospital had happened so quickly there was no saying which side had done it. He wouldn’t put it past Michael or Lucifer, to try to wipe out a weakened enemy force regardless of casualties. Several millennia later, he would invent the term ‘conscientious objector.’ In many cases, it would be met with equally poor reception amongst humans._

_On this plane, now, the fighting has moved farther off; the outpost sacked of all supplies, everything has been burnt down to embers and abandoned in the assumption that he was as dead as the others. He struggles to his feet and steps past Ramiel’s body, clutching his gaping side in a vain attempt to staunch the Grace and blood that seems to coat... everything._

_He is stumbling in a shocked daze, tripping, robes snagging on the twisted metal and broken halos of his friends, siblings, comrades. Bodies torn up and ripped apart with something unspeakable that did not exist before, but has a name now. Two of his closest kin, Adnachiel and Temmael, are dead just behind him, one seraphim still stretching out her fingertips as if to brush the back of his heel, a thousand shimmering eyes gone dull and vacant before she could even call his name._

_The chasm in which they fight is a blindingly luminous, cloudy valley between two mountainous galaxies, gold-scattered and red blushed purple bloomed white to blue, tipped in green, blanketed in stars suffused with colors not known to human minds. Many of these stars, he had seeded here himself and watched as they dispersed, radiant in their resplendence, and now they are the blood-fed fields where desecrated remains will be lost, forgotten, forever._

_He is wading deeper, into a horror that numbs him as he continues to survey the wreckage that had been home, the sounds of clashing weaponry fading into a faint ringing in his ears. His fingertips trail sparks, comets, long-tendrilled meteor belts that spiral outward to spool around the nearest planets in a glimmering mist. The tear-tracks on his bloodied, dirty face ice over. There is nothing beautiful left. There is nothing whole anymore._

_At first, he barely feels it._

_Barely feels anything._

_There is a roar from the front lines; Michael and Gabriel and their disciples have rounded up a group of rebels, many of which he recognizes even as far away as he is. They handle them like dumb beasts, but these are healers; resourceful, useful, compassionate. Michael gestures, and Selaphiel and Uriel pull aside three of the captives, and his eyes widen: They must be letting this band go; how can they have a quarrel with them? These are peaceful beings: the three captured leaders are Ariel, who must have been taken captive at their outpost, Zadkiel, and Chamuel, who are inseparable in a way few other angels ever understood. All three had shown mercy to any injured being that could be saved, regardless of the side on which they fought. Why are they being treated like this? The two Archangels shove the prisoners into a line and move behind them, hands on the pommels of their swords._

_And then it comes to him, that in the eyes of his most orthodox brothers, compassion to both sides amounts to loyalty to none._

_“You cannot serve two masters.”_

_Gabriel had said that to him once, when the training began for war before war existed. He bites back the urge to intervene. There is nothing he can do, now. He watches the three kneel. Their tattered wings fold across one another’s shoulders in a final show of solidarity and comfort. Selaphiel stands behind Ariel, Uriel behind Zadkiel. The swords are lifted, a murmur of prayer, and in the next moment they are run through with blades already slicked with gore. Chamuel moans, tries to gather Zadkiel to him, and is himself slain with the same weapon._

_The sword is tugged free, briefly wiped down, and carefully placed back in its scabbard._

_The three healers, left abandoned where they fell._

_He leaves his faith in Her there, too, and turns away._

_Before him spreads that endless sea of broken bodies, voices of the dying like howling wind; they are already dissolving back into basic elements, as though they never existed at all. Nothing will be left but his stars. He wishes to extinguish them as easily. Take from Her what he made whole and good, the way She took so much from him in this madness._

_How could She love them, to make them capable of these things?_

_He does not scream or beg or even speak, not then, not yet. But he kneels and traces a circle, sets it spinning as a fathomless kirtimukha, lets it eat away at the light and the majesty around it, and another, and another; pools of destruction; a quasar blossoms like a black peony next to each of the dead. He gives them each measureless years of cruel, all-consuming reparation, ebbing away all that he had made in Her name._

_By the time they capture him, he is laughing hard, unable to stop despite his grief, warmth already seeping away like water drying in a desert._

_***_

_Despair._

_That came first. It’s not common knowledge that the Fall starts with such a mild emotion, but it’s what it means that matters: Despair is more than doubt; more than a question or a lack of faith, it is the certainty that hope is completely gone. When despair enters, it is insidious._

_This was what took him so long to understand: Despair carries with it the underlying belief that She is uncaring, unable, or unwilling to protect him. In a sense, it is an insult, a belief that circumstances were beyond Her control or Her benevolent influence._

_He did not intend to sin._

_He just asked the wrong questions. Asked them until they gagged him, wrote them out until they bound his hands behind his back._

_So he prayed them instead:_

_Why? And why in Your name? I do not recognize You anymore._

_What have we become?_

_Should I have fought? More than defended myself, should I have taken up arms against them?_

_Your children are dying. We have learned things we were never meant to learn. Love has become law has become legacy has become loss-- We have learned to shape ourselves in our own image, and it is ruinous._

_***_

_The remaining captives, he among them, are forced into heaven’s physical plane and taken to a long hall marked with a ‘V’ with rows and rows of barred cells. Within each one is a mirror. They remove the gag and the bindings before they throw him in. He is going mad. Or sane. Or something else._

_He starts to mutter, pacing, asking all the questions he had never dared to give voice to before; if he is going to die, now, he might as well try to get some answers first._

_He doesn’t realize yet that there is something worse than true death._

_“Why the obsession with bilateral symmetry?”_

_“Is this how You want it all to happen? Are You proud of us now, that we have learned to despise each other?”_

_“Are You actually encouraging them to do this in Your name or have You left the party unattended, hmm?”_

_“I could not help but notice the blueprints for snails, and who is responsible for that?”_

_“Was there always a set of frigid barred cells in heaven? Was this planned?”_

_"What will become of the earth, now that heaven is fractured?"_

_"Who will protect them from us?"_

_"Who will protect us from each other?"_

_“Why am I here? Why did You even create me?”_

_“Did You ever love me?”_

  
  
  


_“Are You there?”_

  
  
  


_The Archangels are slowly making their way down the line. Each captive will be taken, paraded by Ananiel and Jophiel before the victors, and as they cheer, he hears again the sounds he had only ever heard in the War that led him here. It is a sound of vocal chords, taxed to breaking by an emotion he himself is feeling, entirely alien to him and overwhelming. It is not known by name yet, but the sound tells him that when it’s his turn, he will have wished he’d fallen in the fight, cradled on all sides by stars, allowed to fade back into whatever disparate parts he was before his creation._

_***_

_They are getting closer. Much time has passed._ _  
__  
__He hates the mirror._

_As one of Her creators, he is strong, steady, made beautiful by Her own hands. Muscles smoothed over with pale freckled flesh, tall and solid, eyes a dusty honeyed bronze, pearly dove-lavender wings spanning wide and narrow, hair soft and straight and thick in an opalescent cascade like the waterfall nebula._

_He did not notice, at first, what was happening to him._

_When he remembers, he remembers it wrong. Several thousand years later, he will believe that it started with his eyes, but it was more subtle than that. Damnation is more like a draught that gutters the candle in your peripheral vision, before extinguishing it entirely. You doubt your own senses, at first. Look. Did you see that? Just there, did you notice? Are you sure?_

_The cell guts him mentally, emotionally, bares an ugliness in him he wanted to smother away; did not even know he was capable of. He has been praying, lately, in a way he has not prayed before. He speaks to Her, wonders about Her, without expecting an answer anymore._

  
  


_Where have You gone?_

  
  


_Where have you gone?_

  
  


_Have you gone?_

_There is silence._

  
  


_He is so cold. He did not know that word before either, but it has entered into being now, along with words like ‘scream,’ ‘betray,’ and ‘violence,’ and ‘fear,’ ‘contempt,’ and ‘regret,’ ‘beg’ and ‘pain.’_

_And ‘free.’_

_And ‘brave.’_

_And ‘martyr.’_

_He is not at all convinced that any of the additions are better than the others._

_He stares at the mirror, and watches it distort as the distant roar of “justice” fails to fully drown out the agonized cries of the other rebels._

_Something is happening to him. Until this point, his physical corporation had not changed since he was created. It’s as if something has been… extracted, cut away, and the sensation has been getting worse._

_First, it was a cold chill, which then settled and sunk in its claws. His feathers were falling out, raw sores beginning to mar his skin, nails sharpening slowly, hands that once were made to create, now fashioned to harm and wound._

_And something else, something worse._

_It was only hours ago that he had noticed: The bronze of his irises now threaded through with a jaundiced, sickly shade of yellow he had never seen before, and even the sclera was getting duller, no longer the clear and shining white it was supposed to be. It almost looked like the border between the two was beginning to blur and fade._

_A wordless, guttural cry. A shattering. A bleeding hand. A web of crackled class, black patches dotted through where pieces fell to the ground in a hail, spiraling outward from the center of his own accusing reflection._

_Was it lying? A trick? The pieces that littered the floor and bloodied his feet showed him the same disfigured reflection; something pure gone to rot. No longer Her image, but his own. A slow descending._

_What is happening to me?_

_He thinks of Chamuel and Zadkiel, and Ariel. Remembers that he could have lost but at least fought, and he learns what it is to feel shame._

  
  


_What have I done?_

  
  


_I didn’t mean to. Please don’t leave me._

  
  


_I’m sorry._

_I’m sorry._

_I’m sorry._

_There is silence._

  
  


_When they finally come for him, it is almost a relief. He is shackled, stripped, dragged from his cell._

_The list of his transgressions is announced aloud as he is positioned naked before the tribunal, tiers of stony faces before him, staring condemnation as though he is a stranger._

_Even in his dream, he cannot remember his true name. In its place is an absence… His existence has been stricken from the ledger of Heaven and burned away when he Fell._

_“ , you stand accused of aiding and abetting in the rebellion of Lucifer, undermining the order of Heaven, denouncing your Creator and abandoning your celestial purpose for selfish gain.”_

_His hands were trembling, bound together in chains._

_He had not heard Her voice since years before the war began. He longs to hear it even now._

_A weight rose in his chest, threatened to choke him,_ ** _Deus meus, ex toto corde poenitet me omnium meorum peccatorum,_ **_he murmured, shivering, so frightened that he could no longer feel his battle wounds beneath the thrumming in his veins,_ **_eaque detestor, quia peccando, non solum poenas a Te iuste statutas promeritus sum, sed praesertim quia offendi Te, summum bonum, ac dignum qui super omnia diligaris. Ideo firmiter propono, adiuvante gratia Tua, de cetero me non peccaturum peccandique occasiones proximas fugiturum. Obsecro Te… Obsecro Te, Mater… Obsecro Te, Paenitet me, Mater, protegas me opus hora mea..._**

  
  
  
  
  
  


_There is silence._

_He can barely keep himself from collapsing, he is shaking so badly._

  
  
  


_“Speak your last words.”_

  
  
  


_His voice is low but it carries._

_“I t-took no side in this war, aided and abetted no one, I gained nothing.”_

_Michael glanced up, meeting his infected eyes above the scroll they read from. He realizes it may be the very last time he sees them. Michael almost seemed to recognize it, too. There was the minutest sliver of pity in their mien as they lowered the scroll._

_“You do not deny, then, that you denounced your Creator?”_

_He waited.  
  
_

  
  
  


_**I am scared.** _

_There_

_is_

  
  


_silence._

  
  
  


_“She has denounced me,” he replied._

_Michael swallowed hard, still could not manage to look away. Their eyes are a reflection not unlike the mirror in his cell, he thinks: Disbelief, numbness, confusion, disgust._

_“Strip his wings. Let the Fall take the rest.”_

_Gabriel, Uriel, Sandalphon descended on him like a pack of dogs, held him down, tore away fistfuls of feathers, took a dull knife to his hair and cut it away._

_Michael’s voice carried over the restless tribunal, “You have been weighed. You have been measured. You have been found wanting.”_

_The firmament gapes wide before him, a howling abyss._

_He is dragged to his feet, kicking, gasping for breath, he is brought to the edge. On the other side, Michael stands solemnly, looking at the drop, then back at him._

  
  


_Crowley shuts his eyes, the strangest calm enveloping him. He feels the barest kiss of celestial light on his skin. The wind rakes through his ragged hair. The music of the spheres is a watercolor backdrop to the din of the crowd, but as they go silent in the tension of the moment, it swells louder, and he is taken back to a piece of life most precious to him: stringing a kaleidoscope of color into a galaxy, satisfied and fulfilled and Loved, he is where he belongs, never alone, none of them are, She has seen the work of her son and it is Good._

_Breathe in. Breathe out._

_There is Silence._

  
  


_The moment breaks, Michael lifts a hand to give the signal, but it’s too late: He stretched out his arms, pulled himself free, and tipped into the void._

  
  
  


_To this day, he does not know how the chains on his wrists had broken._

_***_

_Pain._

_Blindness._

_He regains awareness in the midst of a pitch black lake, aflame with oil-slick waters closing in above his head; he has been stunned by the Fall, wings raw, still wounded from battle, skin blazing with the sores that had begun to plague him in his captivity._

_Even drowning, he is burning alive._

_Images and senses jumble together, swimming, the hands reaching to try to pull him under, teeth that tear at him, pull the flesh from his limbs as he struggles away, until the pain overwhelms him and he succumbs again to the dark._

_It is not clear, in his memory, how he got to shore._

_Although he cannot see in this darkness, he only knows by sound that others have survived Damnation._

_The omnipresent crackling and hot breath of fire is licking at his back and naked wings. He had thought he was blinded when he Fell, but it was only too dark to see ahead of him, where the shore stretches into land._

_Every part of him aches in protest as he turns to look over his shoulder, struggling to understand, when he sees it: a comet, plummeting from the heavens to plunge headlong into the center of the lake, fire and oil fountaining upward with the force of it, showering sparks again to feed the waters that still burn around the point of impact._

_In the magnesium flare of that collision, his surroundings are briefly lit up in chiaroscuro: Screams echoing underneath the roar of the fire, the lake is everywhere littered with his fallen brethren._

_Some, like him, had seemed to be foundering in the waters but somehow clawing to shore, others clung to the floating dead._

_The waves that ripple outward from the center are tremendous; it must have been this that eventually laid him here. The pain keeps mounting, every part of his body pleading at once for attention, from his broken bones to his burnt skin to his snapped wings to his eyes, somehow seared even by the weak light of the flaming waters. He almost choked, vomiting up sludge, a combination of the black sand and oily, tar-ribboned water. He heaved, several more times, trying to get the last of it out of his lungs and stomach._

_Rage, righteous fury, indignation and the vilest taste of hatred seemed to well up from nowhere within him, there is an absence, and it maddens him—_

**_I hate You. I_ ** **hate** **_You._ **

_He curses her in languages not yet created, dimly aware of the deep and rattling sound in his chest._

_He’s snarling. Growling like an animal._

_Oh God, what—_

_PAIN flashed through him like a thunderbolt at the mention of Her name._

_He dragged himself somewhat into a sitting position there in the sand, and began to rock himself. The bleak cavern is so filled with suffering that it stung like pins and needles in his flesh._

_How can this be happening? This isn't real. This_ **_is not_ ** _real._

_There’s nothing in existence or without it not created by Her hand; surely this cannot be where they were meant to go, surely She is mistaken? This pit of depraved, abused, merciless creatures, this is Her intention? She has damned him? Fine. Damn Her. Damn Her and every shiny little toy that blindly follows Her fucking orders, every simpering mindless one of them, Bastards, those fucking_ **_bastards--_ **

_He retches again, spits blood and bile into the sand, horrified, before touching with his tongue-- Sharp. His teeth are long and pointed, and hollowed, dripping venom--- What is happening?_

_What the fuck is happening to me?_ **_Stop._ ** _Stop._

_Something is so horribly wrong, not with his teeth or his eyes or his skin but with_ **_him_ ** _, because why would he do that? How could he possibly hate anyone, let alone Her? Question Her, yes. Lose faith in the Divine Plan, yes. But hatred and rage are new and horrifying, intense emotions that seem to take control of his body and mind, and made him took Her name in vain, which he would never—_

_—would he?_

_Icy fear trickled its way down along his spine and he suddenly realizes… he doesn’t know._

_He didn’t think he would Fall either, but here he is. He was damned for a reason. Why?_

_Was he wicked?_

_Was he truly hateful? How could he possibly feel such things if he weren’t evil, deeply flawed in some way?_

_His memories of his life above began to grow fuzzy at the edges._

_What sort of being was he? Not an angel anymore, not if the mirror he remembered was correct. His body had become corrupted, sick, and his eyes… he shuddered._

_Could he even call himself— wait._

_What had he called himself?_

_At first he laughed, stupid, no, it was the Fall, anyone would be unhinged right now, surely you must remember your own name?_

_I am…_

_I, me, I am— blank._

_A page ripped from his eternal ledger._

_Panic tightened its coils around him—no, no that can’t be right, no— I have a name, I know I do, I have a name—_

_And he realized that he was whispering the words aloud as he rocked himself, “I have a name, I exist, I still exist, I do, I have a name, I have a name, I exist… I exist… I exist…”_

_The moans and cries of dying angels surround him on all sides. Some are begging in tongues. Others scream as they go mad with the loss. He feels it too, the last dregs of Grace slipping away, water from cupped hands. He looks around himself, taking it in, the expanse of it._

_The gravity._

_The chorus of their agony is so loud he cannot hear himself._

* * *

Aziraphale dislikes nights like this.

Overall, the last few years have been the best of his exceedingly long life. He has lived with Crowley, or Nanny Ashtoreth, as she would wish to be called during the day, for nearly four years now in the same small cottage on the edge of the Dowling estate. They have in many ways become each other’s family. Had you asked him even five years ago whether he would ever have thought this possible, he would have scoffed. Yet here they are, a fire in the hearth, the moon outside, Warlock tucked into bed in the manor house, and Crowley sprawled on the bed behind him, asleep.

A warmth suffuses the cottage, and he is happy, except…

There’s a moan, soft, almost inaudible. Crowley rolls over and twitches, a frown marring his beautiful features.

This is why, you see. Before, he’d always wondered why Crowley slept. Living in such close proximity helped to explain so many of the Serpent’s habits that had vexed him, though. Sleeping, he now knew, was usually a respite from the chronic pain that the demon endured, pain that worried the angel rather more than he cared to admit. Crowley was stubborn as hell, literally, and Aziraphale often found himself quite torn between trying to respect the demon’s wishes and autonomy, and the knowledge that if the bloody demon would _let him,_ he could so _easily_ remove his suffering, even if only temporarily.

Another rustle of covers from behind him, and Aziraphale puts his book aside with a miracled bookmark. When he looks back, he sees Crowley tense as a bowstring, hands clenched in the covers, teeth gritted.

An echo of that pain washes over him and he breathes it in, feels it curl in his chest and tug on his heart, scatter down his spine and limbs with a residual tingle. No, no, not good at all.

When the ache moves to his shoulders and twines itself through his wings, he shakes it off and stands up, cracking a few joints stiff from sitting. He recognizes this. He knows from experience, now, that this particular soreness means Crowley is dreaming of his Fall, and this will not do.

The angel settles in beside him, still above the covers, and begins to hum. Crowley wouldn’t recognize it awake; he’s tried. For some reason, when he’s conscious, the Music of the Spheres is just noise to him, but when he’s sleeping, whatever small celestial part of him remained was still listening for the way back Home.

Aziraphale hums.

Crowley is still caught in his nightmare, and the angel puts his hand through the demon’s hair, trying to soothe him. 

* * *

_They beat him bloody, egg him on, dare him to fight back. Shoved, battered, tripped and sneered at, he pushes it all down to keep a level head. Hell is overcrowded, claustrophobic; it was the mass panic and destructive chaos of a theater on fire with the exits locked. Nobody’s name was remembered from Before, it was every being for themself, and those who survived were those most willing to endure the torture out of spite, most of them purposefully destroying their appearances to revel in all that She was ‘not.’_

_Crowley found this pointless. She had created everything, every atom of existence and the spaces between. There was no place they could go, no features they could wear that did not bear the fingerprints of God, no matter how they rearranged them._

_This, to him, made it worse._

_The only other being in Hell who seemed to have come to the same conclusion was Lucifer himself._

_He is dragged by his crooked bleeding wings, shoved down to taste the grit and filth and ash against his cheek with a punishing foot on the back of his neck, “ **Who do you serve?** ” they ask, and his mouth says ‘ **Satan** ’ as his mind says, ‘ **myself**.’ _

_Lucifer, too, had kept as much of his Angelic form as he could. For him, it was likely a matter of vanity. This worked in Crowley’s favor, since he assumed that Crowley acted out of similar rationale and approved greatly of this, the first sin of Pride, a sign of possession of their own bodies in defiance of Her wishes._

_For his keenness and his calm, he was the only one allowed to keep his physical corporation as intact and similar as possible to his former angelic self. There were things destroyed by the Fall that could not be restored, of course, but they are hidden easily enough when he is on earth for the task he will be given._

_In Hell, however, there was no way to hide: The butterwhite opal of his hair was stained a rusted red. The sores on his skin peeled, revealing shining scales in patches beneath. His eyes settle into something reptilian. The feathers of his wings grow back slowly, the soft lavender down is only a memory now, patches filling in with a gunmetal gray that deepens to black. His halo is a fracture, an endless shattering that swallows light and radiates spokes of ice, rings of Saturn, the bleak corona of an eclipse._

_His passive nature in Hell has already had other lasting effects: Health and vitality are pared from his bones, excess muscle melted away like wax, made sinewy. Strong, still, but agile, lighter. Thin. Cunning._

_Hungry._

_In exchange for preservation of his body and the ability to hide it around humans, he must become Lucifer’s eyes and ears on the earth, thwarting heaven’s ambassadors where and when he can. He agrees, immediately, without hesitation. Any excuse to leave Hell is worth whatever it will cost him._

_In addition, he must have a second form. The others have been melded with theirs, grotesque unities of Divine form and the lowliest creations of the earth, likely ones they themselves brought into being under Her auspices._

_“Give me a name and your chosen totem.”_

_Crowley thinks on this._

_He remembers seeing, lifetimes ago, a bird created by an angel he had only met once or twice… It was sleek and beautiful and playful, and when he closes his eyes, he still pictures it, a span of blueblack feathers imprinted on the sky, a voice too hoarse for singing, but clever enough to speak…_

_“C-Crowley,” he says, “A crow,” and cannot even finish the words before Lucifer laughs, and the others join in, mocking, spitting at him._

_“A crow? What, do you miss heaven so much? The flying beasts are Hers. Do not make me question your loyalty so soon.”_

_Crowley feels the scales shifting between ribs, along the sides of his thighs knee to hip, and trailing lengthwise neck to spine, a scattering of them at the outer cheekbone beneath each eye, some now roughening what had been the tender skin on the underside of his wrists. Marking him. Trapping him. He has wings, yes, but he is a broken grounded creature who can no longer fly._

_Satan frowns, seems to think better of it, and descends from his throne._

_“No, I have plans for you.”_

_He takes a bruising hold of his jaw and presses a thumbprint to Crowley’s temple, burning a sigil into the skin, and as he does, Crowley screams-- the burn refocuses, sharp and driving, an unbearable lance through his insides that tightens, wells up acidic in his throat and makes his mouth taste of iron._

_“Earn your way back into my good graces, snake, and I may let you have the name.”_

_He is reshaped against his will, left in a writhing jumble of coils, agony electrifying nerves he hadn’t had before, he seizes at the Ex Archangel’s feet, screams diminished to a cobra’s growl as his bones and skin try to decide which of the serpent forms to resemble--_

_“Until then, ‘Crawly’,” Satan and his assemblage of monstrosities chuckle, “Get up there and make some Trouble.”_

_They took away his remaining dignity and gave him a Garden._

* * *

Crowley thrashes once, panting, and his angel hums a little louder, brushing the hair back from his face. There’s a cold nagging twinge that’s flaring in the demon’s belly, making him shiver and wrap his arms around himself, turning to bury his face in Aziraphale’s side with a groan. The angel feels a responding pang. He winces, and tugs the blanket up around the demon’s shoulders to keep him warm.

* * *

_Hidden in the trees, he practices. He had hoped that at some point, it would not hurt to switch between snake and self, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. He has found in-betweens that appeal, one in particular that obscures his wings and his halo, and allows him to hide his damaged eyes and split tongue behind a minor demonic miracle. Like this, he would pass for a human if a little unnatural around the edges. In fact, he looked nearly indistinguishable from his former self, though much thinner and slightly paler._

_He still turns his face upward to bask in the sun, enamored of the pristine sky, and wonders if someday his wings will heal enough to let him claim it. For now, at least, he must accept his coils and curvature. His voice becomes breath that sibilates in a hiss like rain hitting stone in the desert._

_He has a task to complete._

_He watches the humans, initially intent on feeding his resentment of God by taking it out on them, but the very first day of his observation disabuses him of that notion._

_Adam is a bit of a bore, if he’s honest, but Eve? There’s a genuine glimmer of fascination in her expression no matter what she looks on, instantly endearing her to the Serpent. He’s almost sad to have to tempt her, but looking around, he has to imagine there’s not much appeal to life in a cage, no matter how lovely the scenery. No doubt the two would be unnerved by another human in their midst, so he chooses to appear as the Serpent, waiting until Eve is alone. He slinks through the branches of the forbidden tree, beckons her with amber-yellow mesmerism._

_‘What’sss wrong with knowledge, hmm?’ he murmurs to the woman. ‘What’s ssso terrible? You know what knowledge isss, don’t you?’_

_He tilts her head up with a nudge, and from their vantage point on the hill in the very center she can see the top of the wall, an unbroken barrier lining all sides, defining her place in the world without her consent._

_“It’ssss freedom.”_

_He plucks the Apple with a coil of his tail and drops it in her hands. She bites, and he is stunned to discover that the pain that has plagued him eases its hold a little. The sin takes the edge off, but that tiny bit of gnawing conscience doesn’t satisfy, not when his heart sinks at the consequences._

_Funny, how the Original Sin doesn’t feel much like a sin at all. It makes him nervous._

_It’s disobedience to God, but not altogether wrong of him to want a better life for them, is it? They’re free now, but the cost is steep. What has he set in motion?_

_The hunger began in Hell, before God cursed him. And even then, it exasperates him that it is this moment, in his shame and confusion, that She deigns to speak to him. Not when he Fell. Not when he had cried out to Her in captivity or saw his brothers and sisters slaughter each other in cold blood. This is when he realizes the curse for what it is, furious that he had played into Her hands again and again, mind ringing with the sentence that was not so much a prophecy as a reminder: ‘Dust shall you eat, all the days of your life…’_

_Adam and Eve are banished and endangered because of him. Hunger isn’t the curse. It’s satiety._

_He has a conscience. He is not like the others. And he will starve, if not because of that, then at least because mankind will know better than to trust him ever again._

_She makes sure of it._

_The demonic miracle that cloaked his eyes, his black wings and brimstone hair is savagely ripped away, even as he grasps for it- Please! No- leaving him shuddering beneath the tree, feeling naked and exposed, already achingly empty. The shock of it had torn a cry from his lungs and startled the birds in the nearby tree. They caw, a chaotic fluttering skyward and over the wall, over… a head of cloudy curls and flowing white robes. He watches the shining figure press a flaming sword into the hands of a baffled young man before ushering them down and out of the gate, glancing around fearfully as if scared he would be noticed._

_Crowley freezes time in place without even noticing (without even knowing he could, in fact), and he stares, chest hitching as his own sobs begin to slow, then stop. Awestruck, as time gradually restarts, he wipes his eyes and sees the angel return to his post with a nervous wringing of his hands, painfully obvious in his guilt. Crowley has the oddest compulsion to laugh, his own misery and resentment forgotten. He wants in a way that, for the first time in his damned recollection, has nothing to do with the jagged-edged pit inside him. He flows back into a sinuous constrictor, compelled by the sight of this devious and frankly ridiculous angel, and he remembers again what it is to be curious._

There’s music that fades into white noise as he regains consciousness. There are fingertips running circles in his hair.

After a moment, the Serpent groans and turns over, blearily looking around before turning to self-consciously scrabble for his sunglasses on the bedside table.

“Angel? You alright?”

His voice is a little rough from sleep, and Aziraphale regards him quietly as Crowley brushes at his cheeks, sweeping away whatever tears might have remained. The tinted lenses obscure, but cannot entirely conceal the dark circles forming under his weary eyes.

“I’m fine, my dear. A little sore, perhaps. Do you want to tell me what you were dreaming about?”

“Nothing. Not worth the breath.”

“Are you certain?”

“Please, can we not do this? I’m okay, angel. It’s ancient history. No use reopening old wounds.”

Aziraphale hesitates, and Crowley knows that look all too well. He swings himself out of bed, starts to tug on his boots, even as the angel fidgets nervously with his hands in his lap. The moment stretches to breaking, and Crowley turns to look for his jacket.

“Crowley.”

“I’m going for a walk.”

“My dear, it's the middle of the night and It’s freezing out there. Don’t be foolish, sit down, I won’t pry if you don’t want to talk about it.”

“I can’t. I need to clear my head.”

“Please don’t lie to me.”

The request is softly spoken but resigned, as though Aziraphale thought it was futile to even ask, and the sadness of it knocks the breath from his lungs. He sits in the chair by the door, coat in hand.

“Angel--”

“Don’t. I know you don’t mean to, maybe you aren’t even aware of it. But you aren’t leaving to clear your head, Crowley. I’m not a fool. We’ve lived together long enough that I can tell.”

Blue eyes meet his with a half shrug, and Crowley sighs, and drops his head in his hands.

“I felt pain,” the angel explains, “A bit, while you were sleeping.”

There’s really no answer for this, and no way to work a way around it without stepping into a minefield of arguments they’ve long worn out.

As always, as ever, Aziraphale saves them. At least for tonight, it seems he isn’t out to press the subject, and he pats the side of the bed next to him.

“Come back to where it’s warm. At least let me help get some of the tension out of your wings, if nothing else.”

It’s an offer he has absolutely no right to accept, but he does so anyway, toeing off his boots and leaving the coat in a heap on the chair. Aziraphale gives him a chiding click of the tongue for leaving things in such a state but doesn’t ask him to fix it, instead focusing on kneading the knots out of his shoulders and moving slightly downward where the primary scapulae and secondary deltoids meet. There’s a momentary falter, and Crowley notices that the angel’s hands are shaking slightly.

“Aziraphale,” He glances back over his shoulder and sees pain creasing the corner of those azure eyes.

“I’m fine, my dear.”

“Are you sure?”

“No use reopening old wounds, right?”

Mattress springs creak a bit as Crowley turns and gathers the trembling hands in his own, belatedly regretting those words. Ah, well, it’s not the first time something he’s said has come back to bite him.

“Talk to me, Angel.”

“Are you sure you don’t want… I mean, well…”

“Zira?”

“I couldn’t help but notice. I have a handle on it now, but it was rather overwhelming with the skin-to-skin contact, that’s all.” The blush would look appealing if he weren’t so concerned about what must be causing it.

And then he feels the desperate clench of pain in his belly and he puts two and two together. 

“ _Ssshit!_ ” 

He drops Aziraphale’s hands as if stung, and scoots back to put a safer distance between them.

How in Satan’s name did the angel pick up on it before he did? It’s a good thing he’s already wearing his glasses. The dream combined with the feeling of being caught out has him cringing.

“I haven’t, um. I haven’t tempted anyone in a while. Warlock has kept us so busy…” the excuse sounds flat even to his own ears. “I’m sorry, angel. Let me make you something to drink, it might help.”

“It won’t help you, though, will it.”

_Not unless you’d-- No._ He swallows hard and shakes himself. _Stop._

Two mugs materialize on the kitchen counter and Crowley rises to begin the process of making cocoa, racking his brain to come up with a spare moment he might be able to take care of this. Aziraphale isn’t often vulnerable to it unless he chooses to be, but with living in such close quarters, it’s unavoidable. Sometimes, like now, he's caught off guard. Other times, Crowley leaves it go for too long until he’s so hungry it buries him, swallows him whole and pushes him to do things he would never otherwise do, and when it overwhelms Crowley there’s a very good chance the angel will feel its aftershocks at least a little, whether he wants to or not. He tries his damndest to never let it go that far. 

It’s odd, because even moreso than their opposing sides and antagonizing higher-ups, this is what Crowley finds most difficult about their lives together. It’s humiliating, and if he dwells on it too much, it paralyzes him with fear. Although he doesn’t act like it, he knows on some level Aziraphale must be disgusted by it. How could he not be? A being as pure and good as he is, feeling firsthand the chronic nagging appetite that plagues him? Does he think Crowley _wants_ to tempt humans, or does he know how horrified he is by his own cravings? He scans his mind for an option, something that will give him a chance to duck out unnoticed. At last, it comes to him.

“Warlock has that school trip on Thursday, he won’t need us. I’ll slip out then. A few more days won’t hurt.”

“But it already hurts, my dear.” The soft way he says it is a dagger and Crowley flinches. 

Intellectually, he knows Aziraphale meant it was hurting _Crowley,_ but it didn’t stop the accusing voice in his heart that reminded him that by proxy, it had hurt his angel, too. He feels cornered. Crowley wants to throw something and feel it _break_ , but he snuffs out his violence like a candle and steadies his hands to pour the cocoa into two mugs.

“I know. Look, I’ll figure something out. I’m sorry you picked up on it.”

Aziraphale looks at him and shakes his head in exasperation.

“There’s no need to apologize, Crowley, but I do wish you would let me help.”

“You do help.” He brought the mugs out and set them on the table between the two armchairs, “Just you being around helps,” and beckoned the angel over to join him. “Takes my mind off it, trying to keep Warlock from seeing what a truly rubbish gardener you are. Here, drink this. It should let up in a minute.”

“I’m sure it would if I had several more.”

“Don’t.” The demon froze. “Please.”

“I won’t, without your consent. For now.”

Fire crackled in the hearth. With a sigh, Crowley lowered into a chair and took a sip. His was, admittedly, more peppermint schnapps than cocoa.

“I dreamed of Falling. Earlier, I mean.”

A nod. “I know, my dear. Or at least I suspected.”

“It’s brutal, Aziraphale. And it’s ugly.” His voice was barely above a murmur as his eyes fixed on the hearth, reflecting for a moment the bottomless lake. The screams, cries for mercy, the hands and teeth and claws, all fighting for purchase while he struggled not to drown. “It hurts. I didn’t realize, at first, what was happening.”

“I should have thought the trial made it obvious?” There was no mockery in the angel’s voice, only confusion.

“No, it started before then. It started after we lost the war but before the trial. We were locked in these cells for weeks as they processed us. We had mirrors, so we could see ourselves decaying as time passed. Not quite the extremes we were pushed to in Hell, not yet, but it was disturbing nonetheless.”

Aziraphale shivered. “I can’t imagine, really. Our heavenly forms are meant to be eternal. That must have been… terrifying.”

“My eyes.” His gaze went distant and unfocused, “I used to have beautiful eyes. It was so long ago now, that’s all I really remember, about what I looked like. That, and my wings.”

“Your eyes are still beautiful.”

Crowley blushed and looked away.

“You must have been warm,” the angel added, trying to dispel any awkwardness, “not being cold blooded yet.”

“Or damned,” he replied dryly, “Well… That, and I was probably two stone heavier.”

“You--Wait--W-What?” He didn’t mean to sputter, but it was hard to even imagine Crowley with a spare ounce of fat or muscle mass on him _anywhere,_ and with him being so wiry and slender, honestly, where would the weight even go?

The Serpent blushed harder, took off his glasses and fidgeted with them a little. “I was a creator and a healer, but I was a warrior too, before I Fell. I was bigger, more solid. The height, my face, the bone structure is pretty much the same, but… in Hell, it… um.” _Why in Satan’s name did I bring this up?_ “I told you, once, years ago that… demons feed on ssssuffering, sin and violence, and I… ngk.” 

He cuffed his neck self-consciously, unsure how much to explain. “Anyway, it s-ssstarved the weight off me, very quickly, and... Well, that’s why…” he gestured at himself vaguely. 

Aziraphale’s eyes widened and his brow creased in worry. “My dear, I can’t… That must have been terrible. Did it hurt?”

“It didn’t feel like anything.” The denial was a half-lie. More accurately, it felt like nothing. Like a frozen, aching, bottomless nothing that could never be filled. At least, not in any lasting way; not in any way that he would let himself consider.

The fire spat and sparked, glowing coals that bathed the room in soft light. 

“It would be quite exhausting,” the angel added gently, “to control the impulse to tempt, I’d think, when you know it would stop the pain.”

"I don't really notice," the demon hedged, tracing the curvature of the mug handle.

"That's not quite true, Crowley."

"It's not a big deal. I take care of it."

The Principality frowned. If he could help the demon to see him as a resource, if he could only convince him to admit and accept help, then he would stop pressing, for Her sake! When would Crowley see sense?

"My dear, be honest with me. Did you think I wouldn't notice, now that I recognize your pain for what it is?"

_He knows. He's repulsed, how could he not be? Cursed damned serpent, no self-control, no consideration for anyone else, living off the pain of others--_

"It's alright to say it hurts, my boy. And with how thin you are... it must be difficult for you," Aziraphale nearly reached for him, but stopped himself.

Crowley blanched and quickly set aside his mug and tried to run damage control:

“It’s not--Angel, please. T-Try to understand, I don’t _want_ to hurt anyone, not really.” His voice cracked, “I mean, _I do_ , but-- it’s not-- I know, you’ve felt it yourself, but it’s not-- I don’t have c-control over that, it’s not me wanting to tempt somebody, I swear--”

Zira's brow furrowed in worry. "Crowley?”

“It’s… it’s like humans, they don’t really want to _kill_ something when they get hungry, it’s-- They just want it to… t-to stop… and I--”

“ _Crowley._ ”

The angel was looking stern now, and Crowley felt adrenaline kick in. _Shit, why did I say anything? He already knew you were hungry, you want your body to be a constant reminder of the danger you pose? The eyes weren’t bad enough?_

“I…” _Fuck._ **_Fuck._ **“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, angel.” His heart was pounding so loud it was ringing in his ears. He dropped his glasses and covered his eyes, “I’m ssssorry…” Teeth bit tongue hard enough to bleed, hating himself for traitorously hissing at the worst possible moment, always, like it wasn’t already a blessed trainwreck of a fucking corporation, like he wasn’t---

He was suddenly, abruptly, tugged up out of his chair and into a hug that was tight enough to hurt a little.

“Crowley,” the angel soothed, “ _Anthony,_ stop. Breathe.”

He felt himself melt a little into the embrace, before Aziraphale shivered against him and he was startled into remembering-- _Skin to skin contact_ \-- and he struggled, trying to disentangle himself before it all got worse, but the Principality seemed already to know what he was thinking, hushed him,

“ _Stop,_ Crowley. _I don’t care._ It’s an annoyance for me at worst, relax, it’s alright. It’s _alright._ Just… breathe. Slow down.”

He couldn’t keep his chest from heaving, and he was shaking so hard he thought he might fall to pieces, but Aziraphale’s arms were tight around him, rocking slightly. The panic was leeching away, slowly, but it left him all too aware of how badly his stomach hurt, and the frustration threatened to send him straight back into a spiral--

“I need you to stop beating yourself up over this. Please.”

_I can’t. How can I? I’m not good, Aziraphale. I’m not nice. Or kind. I am a fucking black hole._

“You said it yourself, Crowley. You can’t help it. It isn’t your fault if you don’t have control over it, can’t you understand that? _It’s not your fault._ You said once that you thought you deserved this, but dear boy, who could possibly have earned such a punishment? You never asked for this.”

_Tell him the truth. Remind him._

“Yes I did.”

The angel tensed. “Do you really believe that?”

“I _Fell,_ Aziraphale. It was my choices that made me this way. I as much as asked for it when I decided not to fight on Her behalf.”

“ _That_ was why you Fell? For refusing to fight?” 

“And for healing the opposition.”

Aziraphale’s heart broke. “I always wondered. I never wanted to pry, but… I must say, I’m not surprised. A soldier that refuses to follow orders? That seems… problematically on-brand for you, my dear.”

“Worse, even. A Commander.” The demon huffed a small laugh. “But I suppose you’re right.”

Aziraphale pulled back with a more somber mien. “I have a simple question, then, Crowley. Look here.”

The serpent reluctantly met his eyes, a little nervous at the steely glint he saw there.

“If our roles were reversed, if it were me in pain, if I were starving and you could do something about it, wouldn’t you?”

Crowley stepped back and gave a frustrated growl, fists in his hair, before turning to face him again, “It’s not the same! Angel, _I’m already damned._ Of course I would.”

“Are you saying that if I were a demon and you were an angel, you’d refuse?”

An image of his angel, thinned and craving, wings torn and colorless, eyes unfamiliar, burned in his mind's eye and the demon shook his head violently to dispel the thought.

“What? No! That’s not even-- Zira-- Aziraphale, listen to me. This isn’t a game of ‘what if,’ this is real, and it’s _dangerous_ , and I’m sorry, but I would rather tempt some rich bastard to cheat on his taxes or whatever than put you at risk. And that’s the final word of it.”

“You, you who made a stand for Free Will, and refused to commit harm against your peers, even at the order of God Herself, you would rather corrupt someone’s _immortal soul_ than-”

“Zira _please_ ,”

“-accept help from someone more than willing to offer it? Someone who loves you?”

And there it was.

Crowley thought for a moment that he had stopped time, he and Aziraphale rounding off against each other, suddenly electrified by the words. Neither of them had actually _said it_ before. It had been an unspoken understanding, or at least Crowley had thought so, that despite the knowing looks and endearments, they were never _going to_ say it, on account of the fact that… well… ducks had ears. Or whatever.

“That’s why I know I wouldn’t Fall, my boy,” the angel continued, standing solemn, “I love you.”

Crowley shook his head with a sad laugh, “Then I’m screwed either way. Love means it wouldn’t be a sin, angel, it’d just be… _charity_.”

He spat the word with no small amount of disgust.

Aziraphale narrowed his eyes. “That’s not true.”

“Now you’re just talking in riddles. It’s either a sin or it’s love, Angel, can’t have it both ways.”

“You must be able to,” he argued, “It worked before.”

_What?_

“What?”

“This isn’t new, my dear. I have loved you for quite a long while. I certainly loved you when you saved me in that church, and well before that. It worked then, why not now?”

Crowley took his seat slowly, struggling to process first that Aziraphale _really loved him,_ second, that Aziraphale had really loved him _for possibly centuries?_ , and third, that _Unholy Hell, could this really be a solution…?_

“I think,” the Principality began, “That one of my own, um, personal vices may be what is saving us. I… well… Dear, you know me. You know I rather enjoy my life on earth, and all of the, ah, _perks_ , shall we say, of having an earthly corporation. Plainly, well, I enjoy eating. Rather too much than is becoming of an angel, I fear. If anything, turning that into an act of love may very well be what could _prevent_ me from Falling.”

Crowley was too stunned to speak. Aziraphale placed his hand over the demon’s and gave a gentle squeeze. “You’d be doing me a favor, my darling.”

“We,” he finally found his voice and cleared it, “we can’t be certain that’s true. What if we’re wrong? Gluttony is a sin only if it’s something taken in excess. What if you just have a…. I don’t know, a-a healthy appreciation for what She has created?”

Aziraphale quirked one eyebrow and put his hand on his, admittedly un-angelic and recently rather rounded belly. “Does this seem healthy to you? Without my interference, my corporation would be only a bit thicker than yours, and yet I routinely eat despite not needing to, sometimes excessively even by human standards. _Intentionally._ It's certainly not an activity approved of by any of my angelic brothers or sisters.” 

“But that’s just it! Angel, there’s more at stake than your Grace. We’ve talked about this before.”

“We have. You’re right. So let’s finally _do something_ about it, Crowley, rather than arguing. And _soon_ , if you wouldn’t mind,” the angel frowned, “if you try to wait until Thursday, I’ll eat whether you want me to or not. It’s a wonder you’re not doubled over, my dear. I’m not even getting the full brunt of it and I’m famished.”

The demon flinched and scrambled, “Sssssorry, I’m so sorry, hold on,” before spotting an empty plate on the counter which he retrieved. Crowley snapped his fingers and passed him the plate, now with a pile of pastel macarons, miracled into replenishing itself as needed. The angel accepted with a self-satisfied smirk.

Realizing he’d been played, Crowley rolled his eyes. “You really are a bassstard, you know that? Sssatan, angel, I take it back. You’d make a great demon. Have the tempting bit down already.”

It didn’t escape Crowley’s notice, either, that the angel was eating faster than he normally would, not stopping to savor every bite, but instead going for simple quantity and letting the plate refill as he finished. It looked… wrong. Took any bit of happiness Crowley typically felt when watching Aziraphale eat and replaced it with guilt. The Principality hadn’t been lying when he said he liked food, but right now, this was only for Crowley’s benefit and it showed.

“Stop, Aziraphale.”

He didn’t.

“Zira, stop. _Please.”_

Crowley, huffed, threw up his hands and kicked the table in frustration.

_“_ Okay! Alright! You win, fine, we’ll talk. Lay out ground rules. Just- Please, you’re going to get a stomach ache, eating like that.”

“Rather the point, isn’t it?” the angel licked crumbs off his fingers, “I’d have one anyway, Crowley, you’re hungry enough that I’d feel it even if I were in the other room.”

“You don’t have to! And I’d very much rather you _didn’t_ , if not for your sake than at least for mine. Aziraphale, you know I hate this. Please, don’t remind me all the time.”

Features softening, the blond set the plate aside with a nod, “You’re right, my dear. I apologize, that was a bit manipulative of me. I don’t mean to intrude, really, it’s just… well, rather like hearing a radio on in the background, I suppose. It’s difficult to tune out when it’s much easier to lapse into listening to what it says without realizing it.”

“Rule one, then. Stop eavesdropping. And I know-” he sighed, dropping back into his chair, “-that sometimes it isn’t intentional. But please. Try.”

“Alright, dear. As much as I’m able. Rule two, then. You tell me when it’s been longer than six days since you’ve tempted. Er, eaten, as it were.”

“Six days?”

A nod.

“Angel, I’ve gone months, _years_ when I’ve had to, why six days?”

“I would prefer you eat every day, if possible, or at least every other, but I know you wouldn’t agree to that. But… six days is, ah...”

“What?”

The angel shrugged and looked at him, “Six days is usually how long it takes before it really disturbs your sleep,” he said quietly. “It becomes rather hard to watch. You’re in quite a bit of pain by then, even if you don’t show it when you’re awake.”

“I didn’t realize you'd noticed," he said, somewhat distressed, "I’m sorry. I can see where that would… be difficult. What if I stopped sleeping?”

“No, dear. And do stop apologizing.”

He knew better than to argue this one.

“Six days then,” he agreed. “We also need to talk about what this will, um, look like.”

“I thought that’s what we were doing?”

“Not quite," he swallowed hard, "I mean… You mentioned before that you’ve already, ah, gained a bit of weight. Just by living with me. If we agree to do this, then. Um.”

“My corporation isn’t at risk of health complications, Crowley, you know that. We’re functionally immortal when it comes to illness or disease, in most cases.”

“Yes, but… Gabriel? Michael? We're in the End Game now, angel. They’re bound to notice.” The demon cleared his throat nervously, “It won’t be a little bit of weight anymore, Aziraphale. It... it might be a lot.”

This did seem to give him pause, remembering his obligation to Heaven. "I'll need to be in fighting form, if this war truly comes to pass. I'm strong enough as it is, I have no doubt, but... you're right, Gabriel is a bit tetchy about appearances... hmm..."

The Serpent saw the opening and jumped: “See? No. This is a bad idea. Forget I said anything, we aren’t doing this. Thursday isn’t so far, I can just--”

“ _Crowley._ ”

“Ngk.”

“We will cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Crowley rolled his eyes, cracked his knuckles and shook out his hands nervously. “This is endangering you, Aziraphale. If God didn’t allow you to Fall yet, you can bet those bastards are just waiting for an excuse, and this could well give them one.”

“Okay,” he glanced away in silent focus. “Okay… We just need to be cautious, that’s all. I can miracle the weight off if I need to meet with them.”

“You know they read the paperwork. And besides, they don’t always announce their visits.”

“Then I’ll…. Oh, I don’t know! We’ll work around it somehow.”

“ _‘S-S-S-SSSSomehow’?"_ He rose to his feet and stalked, "‘Somehow’ is not cautious. _‘Somehow’ does not protect you._ I am not accepting ‘somehow.’”

“Well, what would you suggest?”

“Not coming up with this bloody plan for ssstarters!” He raked fingers through his hair in frustration, “Look, I’m touched, Zira, that you’d even want to go to the trouble, but _this is what I am._ Small sins are enough to keep the worst of it at bay. Unless I’m fine with tempting some bloody human into torturing or murdering someone, or She forbid doing so myself, the hunger isn't going anywhere for any real length of time. Short of actual _murder and damnation,_ tempting an angel to sin is about as reckless as it gets, so forgive me if I’m not prepared to _risk_ _your life or existential wellbeing on a weekly basis_.”

Silence stretched between them, and he dared to hope that the angel would let it go. 

He should have known better.

“But… My dear, you’re hurt,” the Principality said, eyes welling.

"Aziraphale..." Crowley shook his head.

“And that means I’m hurt.”

“ _Angel_ \--”

“Not because of the hunger, Crowley, because I care about you.”

_Damn me back to Hell_. _Curse those beautiful blue eyes and that furrowed brow and that soft-bitten lip._ Seemingly defeated, The Serpent sat heavily and sighed.

“I love you too, Aziraphale. You know I do, even if you drive me absolutely mad. But we aren’t going to solve this one, and certainly not tonight. We always end up at the same impasse. There's no need for you to worry, I've handled it for several thousand years, and that's the only long-term solution I can see. Let’s let this go for now, alright? Please. Figure it out some other time.”

The room seemed to hold its breath while the fire crackled, the din of their voices fading like always, the argument never truly finished. Tension coaxed the angel to his feet where he paced slowly in front of the hearth, deep in thought. His book still lay on the table, forgotten in the face of a more complicated concern.

There was a pained gasp behind him, almost inaudible: A deep, grinding pain in his belly made Crowley curse under his breath and dig the heel of his palm beneath his sternum in an attempt to put pressure against the ache. His stomach growled again, insistently, and he noticed that on the next pass, Aziraphale casually picked up the refilled plate of macarons, and began to nibble them thoughtfully as he walked.

“Angel…”

“Maybe there isn’t a long-term solution between the two of us. Maybe you’re right, and it's--”

"Don't say it."

"--ineffable." 

_Finally, at least he sees sense. Satan almighty, it only took how many centuries?_

“Yes! _Thank you._ I knew you’d--” he stopped, watching puzzled as Aziraphale continued to eat. “Angel, no eavesdropping…?”

It was as though he hadn’t said anything: Aziraphale seemed lost in thought. He tried again.

“Could… Could you maybe put those down?”

He didn’t, he kept pacing, and Crowley noticed with some apprehension that the razor-edge of his appetite was actually beginning to dull. _Oh bless it all… I miracled those for him._ The angel had tricked him into placating him with a plate that would refill itself until Aziraphale actually wanted it empty. It was an indirect temptation, accidental, but apparently it was enough. He might as well be feeding them to the angel himself.

The Principality kept pacing, occasionally licking his fingers clean between bites, and Crowley burned with frustration between the inadvertent sensuality of the gesture, and the urge to knock the plate out of his hands for both their sanity. 

“Look, you agreed there’s not a solution, so just--”

“I said ‘no long-term solution,’” the Angel corrected, and he stopped a moment to finish off the last macaron and brush a few crumbs off his waistcoat.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you need to trust me a little, Crowley.”

The angel set aside the emptied plate, not refilled, and sat beside his friend. _Thank someone,_ the demon prayed in relief, despite the sharp, plaintive ache in his belly that remained. It was a bit more bearable for now, at least.

“Trust that I know what I am capable of, and what my limits are, and if I offer you a way to ease the hunger, trust that I know what’s at stake and that I am willing and _wanting_ to help. And, well, maybe sometimes you’ll say no. Maybe sometimes you won’t, but we must _try_ , Crowley. Please. Give a little. Let me carry some of the burden for once.”

The angel reached over again and interlaced their fingers.

“ _I love you_. Let me help you. Forget the rules and forget what Heaven says. There may be times when we still need to pretend as though we don’t, but even if we can’t say those three words out there, at least you could feel it. Please.”

Tugging his hand free to soothe over the soreness of his stomach, Crowley sighed heavily and finally clenched his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose as he muttered something.

“What’s that?”

“I said,” he straightened and looked away, weighing how much he’d regret these next words, “Okay, Sssssszira. I trussst you.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will continue, lousy ending for a chapter, I know. I'll fix it soon, sorry guys.


	3. Chapter 3

The bus rolled to a stop, and they disembarked, sore and dirty and exhausted beyond measure. Despite the seeming finality of squaring off against the Devil himself, they knew that there was no way they would be let off the hook for their interference.

“-not even sure how much help I can be, anyway, like this.”

Oh bless it, Aziraphale had been speaking this whole time and here he was, allowing his mind to wander. 

“‘M sorry, angel, what were you saying?” He fumbled with his keys, unlocked the door, and the lights at least knew what was good for them: they flipped on without needing a switch.

He turned, and Aziraphale had stopped, having closed the door behind him, seemingly to take it all in with barely disguised curiosity. It occurred to Crowley, suddenly, that this was the first time the angel had ever been invited to his flat, and a wave of awkward self-consciousness came over him.

“Er, set your coat anywhere, alright? D’you want some tea? Scotch? I know I have a tin of biscuits here somewhere, you must be hungry, I’ll grab-”

“Are you joking?”

Seeing the incredulity on his face, the demon stopped in his tracks.

“Er, sorry? I really am knackered, Zira, I didn’t hear what you were saying, but are you sure you don’t want--”

“I’m sure, Crowley,” he responded quietly. He removed his coat and folded it over his arm, hugging it in front of himself in a way that made him appear somewhat uncomfortable. This was serious, then, and whatever he’d just said was clearly in direct conflict with whatever Aziraphale had been saying.  _ Bravo. Husband of the year, you are. He’s been pouring out his heart to you and you haven’t heard a word of it. _

“Sit down, then, angel. I’m sorry. I’m tired. But I’m listening now.”

“I was saying,” he sat and sighed, “that maybe Anges’ cryptic message wasn’t so cryptic. Talking about appearances, choosing faces wisely. I know there’s a battle coming, and yet, it’s as though I can’t… I haven’t…”

“What?”

“I have no self control anymore. I’ve been eating constantly,” he mumbled, “I feel hungry all the time. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

The demon found himself suddenly and horribly voiceless, guilt choking off any reply.

“And my weight… How am I to fight like this?”

“Y-You’ve gained some, yeah, but it’s not like you--”

The angel shook his head, “At the very least, I’m slower than I was before. What if this is what she means? What if,” he shifted nervously, “What if I haven’t chosen wisely, Crowley? Even Gabriel mentioned--Well, he s-said…”

“Said what?” He was distracted, trying not to panic,  _ Of course he regrets it. You’ve known this was coming. _

“He told me I was soft,” the angel admitted, and Crowley’s eyes widened fractionally behind tinted lenses.

“He  _ what. _ ”

“Well,” Aziraphale offered up a self-deprecating smile and shrugged a little, “It’s not quite as though he’s wrong, is it?”

There was a weaponized pause, and the angel suddenly had a greater appreciation for the bravery and fortitude of Crowley's houseplants: He watched the demon rise and sharply turn on his heel to storm across the apartment, snatching his coat off the back of the chair as he went, before Aziraphale was able to jar himself out of his surprise and snap the deadbolt of the door with a miraculous wave of his hand.

" _ Wait,  _ Crowley, what exactly do you intend to do? March up there and battle him yourself? We have bigger troubles before us right now, and if we don't resolve them, you may well find yourself at the end of a sword anyway!"

"What makesss you think he wouldn't find himself at the end of mine?"

"Because that isn't who you are, my dear."

"And what is it exactly about my being  _ a demon _ that suggests I wouldn't want to commit violence, particularly against that wanker?"

Aziraphale raised one wry brow.

"Sounds an awful lot like you're attempting to defend my virtue. Rather chivalrous of you, my Black Knight. Although, permit me, I can't help but point out that's more the sort of thing my lot would do, isn't it? Well, no matter. Do you want my kerchief as a token, then, before you ride off to your duel?"

_ You cheeky bloody bastard. Never should've let you spend those years with Wilde, it's made you absolutely impossible. _

Rather than voice his frustration, Crowley let his shoulders slump, turned, and tossed his coat and keys on the kitchen counter to place hands on his hips. He took the moment to look, really see, and catalogue the changes his angel had gone through in the past few years. 

Aziraphale was strong, by his nature and simply by profession. He rearranged his books, ran inventory, and fussily organized, disorganized, reorganized his extensive collections on a near weekly basis, and despite what some might think, being a bookseller with that sort of obsessive compulsion was by all means labor-intensive. Crowley himself, the few times he opted not to laze handsomely around the shop, would occasionally assist the angel with his tasks, and there was nothing lightweight about the stacks of oversized leather-bound tomes he hefted onto top shelves, balanced against his hip as he climbed ladders, or toted up and down from the apartment above or the binding repair room in back, according to what he wanted to read before bed. Crowley could manage a few at a time, but he found himself both startled and indeed a little impressed by how many Aziraphale could easily carry. All of this to say, Aziraphale might be soft, but he was by no means weak, and privately the demon would have given nearly anything to see what the angel would do if he were to square off against a self-righteous prick like Gabriel, whose fitness was more a side effect of his narcissism than any indication of ability. Crowley had never had the guts to ask Zira, but there were rumors that the Principality was once part of the Cherubim. It wasn't worth the risk of dredging up what would possibly be very painful memories for the angel, not even to slake his own curiosity, but there had been moments throughout the eons together where the demon was convinced it was true.

Round shoulders, a broad and solid chest, biceps that obviously protested the confines of crisp white sleeves which rolled up to the elbows to expose forearms and large, capable hands. But yes, undoubtedly soft, around his middle and through his powerful thighs. All of that kinetic force, the crushing might of a nuclear blast, the potentiality of a goddamn  _ sun,  _ but gentled, curved, suited to a human form and made... fucking huggable. 

And despite the warm unfurling of adoration in his chest, the edges of his mind burned with guilt, knowing that Aziraphale was already insecure. He might be handling it flippantly now, but there was embarrassment beneath it in the way he spoke, even the way he was holding himself, tugging self-consciously at his waistcoat where the buttons were, yes, definitely strained.  _ You did that. You did that to him. Does he hate you for it yet? _

"Oh, I was only joking, my dear." 

Even his voice is tender; a comet broken like a wild horse, a celestial body turned terrestrial, abstract wonder incarnate, tempests in teacups,  _ have I ruined you, debased you, was it me, did I desecrate you even when you will only ever be holy to me? Is this how you will Fall? Not a dying star, not a rockslide, but slow, a leaf tumbling to touch the water, a tap that echoes silently in waves-- _

"Crowley?"

He should stop staring. His eyes drag upward to meet a half-smile that is only lightly teasing. Were he not a demon, he might've been mollified, but he could taste shame the way Aziraphale could feel his hunger, muted but present. 

_ What have I done?  _ He counts backwards, trying to remember, was it six months ago? Eight? With the apocalypse looming, their every-six-days agreement had become a distant memory in the face of survival. Crowley no longer said when he was hungry. In fact… he hadn’t had to, not recently.  _ I’ve taken advantage of him,  _ he realized. The angel was overeating enough to keep ahead of the brunt of Crowley’s appetite. When was the last time they’d been together that Aziraphale  _ hadn’t  _ eaten?

For that matter, when had he last tempted someone? The paintball guns? No, it wouldn’t have counted, there was no true fallout, no harm done, nothing of substance. How long? Too long, if he couldn't truly recall. It was his hunger, there, visible before him in every pound added to Aziraphale’s corporation. The church collapsing beneath the bomb, sacred destroyed by the profane, 1941,  _ “No, Crowley. I don’t need to eat. But I don’t get hungry, either. Or, at least, not unless I’m around you.” _

Never again.

This is what he must have meant, then, at the bandstand. Crowley, heart slick and leaping in his palms outstretched,  _ Our side? _ , praying a prayer he already knows is whispered to deaf ears,  _ We can go off together! _ , holding fast to trust in an arrangement that is already springing leaks. This is why. This is the reason he turned it down.  _ He gave up everything for you, gave up his security, gave up his dignity, selfish, you're so fucking selfish, you wanted him to give up his home too? _

"Oh. Oh my dear, you look quite pale, are you alright? Crowley? Listen, it isn’t your fault, I know that’s what you’re thinking. We'll figure this out, we just--"

"This is why, isn’t it."  _ This is why you needed me to let go, I didn’t understand. I do now. I’m so sorry, Angel.  _ It had been obvious, all along, how had he missed this?

The window panes nearly glowed, dust-motes caught light like snow powder as they settled. A steady accumulation, a drifting down, beautiful until it's seen for what it is and brushed away. Beautiful until after the Fall.  _ Dust shall you eat, all the days of your life. _

Aziraphale couldn’t look more lost if he tried. In his defense, when he found himself unable to figure out when his friend had taken the morose turn, he sensibly stopped to ask for directions:

"What do you mean? Forgive me, but-"

"Please, don't say that to me,” the demon groaned, “As if I could, as if we were equals. As if you'd ever need or want it, when we have nothing whatsoever in common."

"Ah, I see," Aziraphale sinks down beside him and folds his hands in a patient way, listening carefully. "This is about our quarrel. I... I really am sorry. I know that," he held his breath a moment, pained, "...that what I said was terribly cruel. And so, yes, I will need to ask your forgiveness, Crowley. I was frightened. I allowed my pride to take place above our bond, and I'm sorry."

"But you were right, after all. Look at what this has done to you: just being around me is wrecking you. Could you… could you miracle the weight off?”

The angel suddenly flushed, unable to meet his eyes.

“You’ve tried, right?” Crowley whispered, horror in his shaking voice. “It didn’t work?”

Aziraphale didn’t respond. 

Nauseated, he rose and backed away. “Angel, why didn’t you  _ tell me _ ?”

“No! No, that’s not- Listen, I already told you, this isn’t your fault! Crowley, it’s not that I can’t. __ The truth is, I  _ don’t want to.  _ I  _ like _ it, I like knowing that you’re not suffering! I look like this because I  _ love you.  _ I don’t want you to starve. I was- I was  _ proud _ of it, Crowley. I’m not distressed by the weight, do you understand? That isn’t the problem. The problem is that all of this will be for naught if we die anyway because I’m slow and out of practice.”

“Then do it! Miracle it off, angel, please, we can’t risk it.”

He shrugged and shook his head. “The way it’s been lately, I’m not sure that would help. I’ll just be hungry again.”

_ Unholy Hell.  _ “You won’t. I’ll-I’ll leave, you won’t feel a thing, when I’m gone it won’t--”

“Out of the question.” His tone left no room for argument. “Besides, wasn’t there something about ‘playing with fire’ in that prophecy? I had thought it was about my sword, you see, but… What if it’s not? What if it means something else, something we’ve overlooked?”

“No. Don’t do that. Don’t switch topics on this, Zira, not when we’ve just established that your body is a fucking  _ casualty _ of my appetite. We fix that first. Now.”

Aziraphale scowled. “And what if I don’t want it fixed?”

“You can’t be serious! Doesn’t it  _ hurt? _ ”

“What, the hunger?” The angel’s tone was mildly surprised. “I don’t feel it the way you do. At least, I don’t think I do?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s more of a…  _ strong _ suggestion. A sort of tugging, or compulsion. It’s there, and annoying, but I’ve seen how you look when you haven’t tempted anyone in a while Crowley, and that… that’s not how I experience it at all. You look as though you’re being gutted, sometimes.”

He winced at the description. “It’s not pleasant, no.”

Aziraphale sighed, and wrapped his arms around him, “I know. So no more talk about this, alright? Besides, even if it were that bad, you know I would still trade places if it… wait…”

The angel stiffened in his arms and Crowley pulled back to search his eyes. “What?”

“That’s it.”

“What’s what? Bring me up to speed.”

“Choose your faces carefully… Crowley, she means that literally.”

“What?”

“Playing with fire… we know that our respective sides will probably want to destroy us, if they can. What if we switched? Hellfire wouldn’t burn you, holy water would have no effect on me… they would never know.”

_ He… has a point. This could work. Could this work? _

“Maybe,” Crowley hedged, “but… how do we know that’s what they’ll use? Wouldn’t murder be a little ‘un-angelic’?”

Aziraphale just looked at him.

_ Okay, dumb question. _

The demon sighed. “So, if I’m understanding you correctly, we’d… what, switch bodies?”

“Yes. It’s the perfect ruse.”

“Aziraphale,” he hesitated, “we’re overlooking a rather important problem.”

“Which is?”

“We don’t know what, ah,  _ aspects _ of our nature would travel with us, and which ones are innate to our corporations. What if it turns out you’re susceptible to holy water because you’re wearing a demon?”

“Only one way to find out, I suppose. We ought to test it out first, anyway. Make sure the mannerisms are right. Ah, you should probably know, I have a few injuries. From the war. They never did heal properly, and well… just, be ready. Just in case.”

Crowley shrugged. “The Fall didn’t exactly leave me unscathed either. Although… Wait, no. We can’t do this.”

“What? Why not?”

The demon fidgeted uneasily and looked away. “It’s been a while. S-Since, um.”

“Oh,” his face fell, “Right.”

“I could go,” he suggested, thumbing the door, “see if there’s-”

“No, no, too dangerous. We can’t be sure they aren’t already looking for us.”

“Aziraphale, what if I’m not able to eat for you when we switch? A demon sinning has no effect on whether I’m, er, peckish.”

“You managed for centuries before our arrangement, didn’t you? I could maybe, ah, ‘tough it out.’ Perhaps it’s not as bad as it looks?”

“Maybe not. It hasn’t been too bad recently… Okay. But we switch back if you’re in pain.”

“Right,” he swallowed hard and attempted a shaky smile, “Nothing for it but to try, then. I’m not seeing many other options.”

“D-Do we just…?” Crowley held out a trembling hand. Aziraphale reached forward.

There was a snap, as though they were simultaneously shoved hard into a solid wall, a blindingly bright light splitting between them, and a wave of dizziness drove them to their knees.

Crowley groaned, dropping onto his side with a hiss, “Christ, angel, you weren’t kidding about your knee,” his back cracked a bit as he turned over, “...or your shoulder. Were you stabbed? Eesh,” he rolled it gingerly, trying to situate the joint. “Angel?”

He was  _ warm.  _ Heavy. Full. Yes, there were aches, but the rest? Felt  _ wonderful.  _ Even his eyes, easily adjusted to the ambient light, were painless, sharp-sighted, and he was mesmerized by the wood grain of the floorboards beneath his broad hands. He sat back on his heels-  _ ooh, knee doesn’t like that though-  _ and ran his fingers lightly over this corporation, trying not to marvel at how  _ plush _ and  _ beautiful  _ it was. Yielding, thick, not sharp or angular or cold; it was like existing in a pillow. He could get used to this.

  
  


There was a choked off sob behind him.

He turned.

The demon had a moment of shock, just…  _ seeing  _ himself this way: Ribs and spine visible beneath the shirt- was he always so blessedly  _ skinny? _ \- before realizing what exactly he was looking at: His body was shivering, hard, doubled over and panting harshly between clenched teeth.

“C-Crowley,  _ please, _ ” it begged hoarsely, “make it stop, please, make it stop--”

_ Fuck. _

“I knew this was a bad idea,” he knelt and grabbed Aziraphale by the shoulders, “Look at me, focus, come on. Angel.  _ Angel. _ ”

Aziraphale raised his head and Crowley jerked back, unable to control the instinctive revulsion at the predatory reptilian stare of his own eyes. Eyes which now looked betrayed by his reaction.

“Sorry, startled me,” he winced, gingerly returning to the angel’s side, “You’re okay, just… focus on my voice, alright?”

He was starting to understand what Aziraphale meant when he’d said that it was nowhere near as bad for him. True, there was a strange tight yearning in his belly, a vague complaining emptiness, but nothing at all close to anything he would have called ‘hunger’ as he knew it.

“I’m sorry,” he winced empathetically as the Aziraphale moaned helplessly and shuddered, pulled him into a hug, knowing how cold he would be feeling and how even just the warmth Aziraphale’s body exuded could sometimes help to calm him, “I know. It’ll be over in a moment. Take my hand, we’re switching back.”

The angel shook his head against his shoulder.

“Zira.”

Another head shake. Crowley rolled his eyes.  _ Satan deliver me from stubborn angels. _

He took his own hand anyway and forced the switch himself; Aziraphale was too dazed with pain to resist.

The shift went easier than before, and almost immediately he found himself on the receiving end of their hug, though Aziraphale was still trying to catch his breath as he eased back from the embrace.

“I’m sorry,” the blond breathed, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t ready. Give me a moment, I’ll be alright, and we can go again--”

“No! No, we are  _ not  _ going through with this. No way.”

“Crowley, we have to.”

“What, once wasn’t enough to tell you this is a bad plan?”

  
  


But Aziraphale was already up and rummaging through the kitchen cupboards with no small sense of determination. Crowley stared.

“Aziraphale, what are you doing?”

No response. He was still opening and closing cupboards, drawers slamming with a little more force than really necessary.

“Are you okay?”

“I have to eat.”

Well, that wasn’t ominous, was it? “Angel, are you…” he swallowed nervously, “Are you still hungry?”

“No,” he paused as if concentrating on something internal, “Not even remotely.”

He continued to rifle through the kitchen contents, scraping together what he could from its meager supply, even cracking open a jar of peanut butter to start eagerly devouring it by the spoonful.

Crowley slowly stood, a little perplexed and cautious. “Angel?”

He was ignored in favor of the angel humming relievedly around another heaping spoonful of peanut butter.

In a somewhat disturbingly short time, the entire jar was gone-  _ That’s what, a 12 oz jar? 2,280 calories?- _ and Aziraphale was running a finger around the inside edge to gather the last bit.

He felt it, felt the indulgence like morphine dripping into his bloodstream, melting down the cold clench of his stomach he hadn’t even realized was there until it was being numbed.

“Aziraphale,” he whispered to himself, “ _ stop. _ ”

_ Don’t do this to yourself. Not for me. _

But Aziraphale was already sorting through the refrigerator, tsking at its sparse contents, before miracling himself a bowl of what looked to be macaroni and cheese, which he started to down with equal fervor, and that was  _ enough. _

Crowley strode forward, snapped his fingers, and the bowl disappeared.

With a huff and a roll of his eyes, the angel raised his hand as if to snap it back, and Crowley took his wrist in a hard grasp, “ _ Stop! _ ”

Unexpectedly, the angel rounded on him: “Why don’t you  _ tell me _ anymore?!”

“Wh-what?”

Crowley was forced to backpedal as Aziraphale advanced, “You’re hungry, constantly _. _ I thought I was keeping up with it. I thought since you weren’t asking, that it must be gone, that I was  _ helping-- _ ”

“You are!”

“It’s  _ still there,  _ Crowley! I just felt it! And it fucking  _ hurts. _ ”

“I… I’m sorry. I d-didn’t… It’s been so much better these last few years, I didn’t think I had to say anything…”

“That… that was  _ better? _ ”

“It’s never exactly a walk in the park! I’m  _ damned  _ Aziraphale, what did you  _ think _ that feels like?”

“Weren’t you the one who said ‘It’s not so bad once you get used to it?’ Does that ring a bell? Because let me be the first to disagree with you there, on the rational basis that your stomach feels like it’s full of broken glass. On a  _ good _ day.” 

“It’s the ‘get used to it’ part that sort of--”

“ _ Crowley. _ ”

He raked his hands through his hair in frustration. “What do you want me to day?”

“Exactly that! Tell me! Wasn’t that what we agreed on?”

“Fine! You want to hear it? Fine. Yes, it hurts. Yes, I’m hungry.”

Instead of satisfied, Aziraphale looked dejected. “I thought I was able to make it stop, I know I did--”

“You did! You do! But angel, it’s not a perfect fix. Nothing would be, short of causing some real, lasting harm to someone. Neither of us wants that. Even this has had its consequences. Look at you, angel.”

“I still don’t understand. Why wouldn’t it work as well now? Especially when,” he gestured at himself, palmed his belly self-consciously.

“I have my guesses but you won’t like them,” he replied.

“They are?”

“You’re used to it, angel,” his voice was soft, level, trying to place the truth in a gentle tone. “Before, it was… I don’t know, more ‘forbidden.’ The more aware someone is of what they’re doing, the more ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ it feels, then the more satisfying it is for us. You care too much, Aziraphale, you always did. It doesn’t feel as though you’re really sinning anymore because you’re not.”

Aziraphale stared blankly as if attempting to process this information. As if coming to some conclusion, he shook his head once, snapped: “Then I’ll have to try harder.” 

...and started tearing into a sandwich he’d miracled into existence.

Crowley sighed and dropped into the nearest chair, scrubbing his hands over his face with the grim acceptance that the angel would do whatever he wanted and it was likely a waste of everyone’s time to try and stop him. This was not a revelation, of course, in their millenia-long relationship, but that didn’t make it any less irritating.

After about 20 more minutes of substantial, almost impressive bingeing, Aziraphale was finally polishing off the last few bites of ethereally-sourced lo mein, groaning a little as he leaned back to recline on the sofa. His waistcoat was unbuttoned, and although he’d managed to miraculously coax a tad more room from the rest of his clothes, there was no disguising that there was a significantly larger curve to his belly, his corporation rather mercilessly stuffed, as though the angel were determined to reach some point of pain that would somehow equal Crowley’s.

Even the demon felt vicariously overfull, and he was a little worried to find the sensation rather unpleasant. He had wondered, long ago, whether this was even possible: Not only to satisfy the hunger, but to push past the point of satiety. In his mind, he had assumed it would take a sin like murder, rape, something egregious or unforgiveable, and had somewhat subconsciously labeled the idea as absolutely off-limits. Never would he have thought that Aziraphale could  _ eat his way there. _

“Are you done, then?”

“Mmmm. You tell me.”

Without looking up, Crowley stated quietly, “It’s gone.”

“Entirely?”

“Yes.”

With a stretch, the angel righted himself and yawned. “I must admit I’m a bit tired, now. Mmm. And sore.”

Crowley said nothing.

“Are you ready, then? Should we make another attempt?”

Nothing.

Aziraphale sighed. “I know that you don’t like it when I eat like that on your behalf. Unfortunately, without some truly hedonistic fare at hand, sheer quantity had to suffice for quality. I won’t apologize for what I did, Crowley, but I am sorry that it bothers you so much. I wish it wouldn’t. You aren’t responsible for my choices.”

“But I am, though. With this, I am. Or else it wouldn’t work. You’re sinning because of me.”

“What do you suppose free will is, my dear? It would not be a sin if I did not make the choice to do it. Your influence poses a question; it does not make a demand. ‘You might’’ rather than ‘You must.’ Within that difference hangs all the importance in the world.”

“You might Fall,’ rather than ‘you won’t.’ Within that difference hangs all the importance in the cosmos. Our choices have consequences that are not contained in this world, angel.”

“They do. Now, speaking of consequences, I would rather not risk paying for thwarting the apocalypse with our lives. Give me your hand, foul fiend. Let us try again.”

**Author's Note:**

> To Be Continued. Especially since we're all quarantined and I have to write to survive my boredom.


End file.
